Young musicians have sent around 800 entries to The Hindu Margazhi Classical Music Competition around 11.45 p.m. on Saturday.
The competition that was open for both Carnatic and Hindustani styles of music was announced on December 2.
Due to restrictions in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, online video entries were sought and responses poured in from throughout the world.
Youth from as far as Tokyo, Dubai and the U.S. and those from places in India, including Mumbai, Mangaluru and Thrissur have sent in their entries.
Renowned musicians and gurus, apart from The Hindu staffers well trained in music, will evaluate the entries over the next few days.
The judges for the competition are musician and dance scholar and writer Sujatha Vijayaraghavan, violinist LN Sisters and gurus M. Lalitha and M. Nandhini, Mridangist and guru Erode Nagaraj and Hindustani vocalist and guru Lalitha Sharma.
The panel also includes The Hindu’s two in-house music experts. Meera Srinivasan, who covers Sri Lanka, is a student of Lalgudi Jayaraman, while Garimella Subramaniam, an editorial writer, is a music critic.
Ms. Vijayaraghavan is Founder – Organising Committee Member of Natyarangam, Narada Gana Sabha Trust and Executive Committee Member of The Music Academy.
As a musician, she has provided vocal support to her mother and vocalist Ananthalakshmi Sadagopan for over three decades. She has composed kritis and nursery rhymes in Carnatic music.
Ms. Lalitha and Ms. Nandini are internationally acclaimed violinists and composers.
The sisters began singing and playing the violin at an early age having grown up as the fourth generation in a family of musicians. Their grandfather was the late Lakshminarayana Iyer who was a great musician. Mr. Nagaraj, is the prime disciple of Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman.
He served as lecturer in the Thanjavur Vaidyanatha Iyer School for Percussion, The Music Academy, Chennai, for eight years from 1998. He is an A-Grade artiste in All India Radio and Doordarshan.
Chennai-based Ms. Sharma, an exponent of the Mewati Gharana of Hindustani Classical music, has trained in Carnatic classical music and is the founder of Pandit Jasraj Schools in Florida, Atlanta and Los Angeles, U.S.