A good balancing act

MANAGING A software team in faraway Detroit, in the United States, may be his profession. But Madurai R. Sunder is meticulous in sharing time between the information technology close to his mind and Carnatic music soothing to his heart. He learnt the ropes first from his aunt Ananthalaxmi Sadagopan, a performing artiste in the Seventies and then from Madurai T. N. Seshagopalan. His first concert was at a marriage reception in 1974 when he was 14. Since then, Sunder has disciplined his resonant voice and added aesthetics and intuition to his raga sense enormously.

Madurai Sunder manages to come to Chennai for a three-week stay every year, whatever be his pressure at work. "I long to work more in the field of music, but I am afraid it is too late to convert the passion into a profession at this point of time in my life. Also I am not sure if the Indian work culture, with its own plusses and minuses, would accommodate me. I have been away from it for so long. I also have a lot of flexibility in my working time now. I may not have these advantages here. Still, I would go in for music if I have to decide between profession and passion."

A student of IIT, Madras, and IIM, Ahmedabad, Sunder spends a good amount of his spare time in sadakam and listening to cassettes. He and his wife train five students each in a batch on the fundamentals of Carnatic music and Indian culture. The Trinity Academy of Fine Arts, founded by Sunder for this purpose in 1993, caters for the cultural hunger of Indian families settled in the United States. Sunder, on his part, tries to improve upon the clarity of sahitya and tonal manipulations, bringing out all the facets of a raga. Neraval singing is his forte. He lays special emphasis while presenting thukkadas on the advice of his guru. He also proposes to do research in pallavi.

Sunder has rendered concerts in Australia, the United States and the UAE. He gave a concert, under the auspices of the Indian consulate in Dubai to mark the golden jubilee of Indian Independence. He received the Musiri Subramania Iyer award from the Madras Music Academy for neraval singing in 1996, the Nyayapathi Rajamannar award, the Ramaswamy Iyer Shastiapthapoorthi award and the Pankajam Rajan award at MMA in 1998, to mention a few. The latest in this list is the Sarada Krishna Iyer Memorial award for the outstanding concert of the season 2000 under senior category. He is also perturbed by the fact that the crowd at the auditorium is dwindling, despite proliferation of sabhas. "Left to me, I would prefer a small gathering of knowledgeable people among the audience to a full house of others, but then the psychological relief that a good crowd gives to a performer has its own advantage."

SRIDHAR - CHAAMA

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