epic choir performs at cleveland thyagaraja festival

Outside the transit gate at the Salt Lake City airport, 50-year-old marketing professional Bharadhwaj Lakshminarayanan was trying to perfect a gamaka, an embellishment applied to notes in Carnatic music.

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His 12-year-old daughter, Mahathi, corrected him. Moments later, a group of people waiting to board the same flight joined in, singing a Carnatic kriti. Soon, a mini kutcheri unfolded, with curious onlookers wondering about the genre of music being performed. This is a scene from mid April this year, when Bharadhwaj and Mahathi, along with many other Carnatic students, were on their way to the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival. First celebrated in 1978, it is now considered the largest Indian classical music fest outside of India. At the festival, this group from Bay Area joined several other smaller groups, who had practised the same set of songs. Together, they came to perform for EPIC Choir, Chennai-based Sishyakulam’s signature choral ensemble.