Second-year business economics student Shiva Ramamurthi has been playing the violin since he was 4 years old and has been performing regularly since he was 11.
When he was a senior at Trabuco Hills High School, Ramamurthi was approached by Jeff Roy, a UCLA graduate student, to come and perform at this school alongside Aditya Prakash, a south Indian Carnatic music performer and UCLA alumnus.
On Sunday, Ramamurthi will be playing the violin alongside mridangam player Nirmal Narayan and renowned south Indian artist D. Seshachary, a member of the Hyderabad Brothers band, at the Carnatic concert put on by UCLA’s Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth.
“The performance at UCLA during my senior year was a typical Carnatic concert. It was almost identical to the concert that will be taking place on Sunday,” Ramamurthi said.
Carnatic is a style of south Indian classical music, and according to Ramamurthi, it shares similarities with jazz music.
Since 2001, he has been under the guidance of Delhi P. Sunder Rajan who, according to Ramamurthi, is one of the top violinists in Carnatic music.
“I started picking up Carnatic at 6 and 7 (years old),” Ramamurthi said. “Learning to play the music is like learning a language ““ the earlier you learn, the more you keep up with it (and) the better you become.”
According to Ramamurthi, Carnatic music is usually played and listened to in southern India while Hindustani ““ another form of Indian classical music ““ is predominant in the north.
“The classical south music is what we’re performing, but (the two styles are) pretty similar. For a listener who has never heard any of it, it would be difficult to distinguish them,” Ramamurthi said.
According to Roy, Seshachary belongs to a long line of Carnatic instrumentalists and some of India’s best musicians.
When Ramamurthi found out he would be performing with Seshachary, he said he was excited because he grew up listening to his music.
“It’s an honor because he’s such a well-known artist in India. I never thought I’d be able to perform with him,” Ramamurthi said.
Seshachary will perform as the main soloist and will be accompanied by both Ramamurthi and Narayan. Narayan, who has been playing the mridangam, a south Indian drum, for 15 years said that this will be his third time performing with Seshachary.
“Not much rehearsal goes into Carnatic performances, it’s all improvisatory and (the performers) tend to just pick up off of one another during a song,” Roy said.
According to Narayan, the show will last about three hours, which is the typical length of a Carnatic concert. While some pieces are performed by all of them at the same time, Narayan and Ramamurthi also have their own solos to show off their improvisational skills.
“Because we have a strong base, we don’t get thrown off. We already know the scales and rhythmic cycles,” Narayan said. “You have to be ready and on your toes for any kind of curveball they might throw at you. There’s a lot of anticipation, and a lot of the charm is to just go up there and do it on the spot.”
While Ramamurthi has performed both in India and in the United States, he said being able to perform at UCLA as a student after playing as a high school student here makes him feel more comfortable and at ease.
“It’s the same feeling performance-wise, since I performed quite a bit in high school for other organizations, but it’s always nice to perform in your own territory,” Ramamurthi said.