Album Notes

About the CD:

The third album in the Layopasana series features seven instructional solos for mridangam, the ancient South Indian classical double-sided hand drum. Set against the meditative electronic tambura drone and the bright jalra finger cymbals that aurally enhance the time signatures, these creative solos highlight many of the essential techniques and patterns of the mridangam. Useful for students of all levels, the solos uniquely blend the major percussive styles of South India with the innovative artistry of Rohan Krishnamurthy.

About Rohan:

Acclaimed an “international performer and promoter” of the South Indian pitched drum, the mridangam, by USA Today, Rohan Krishnamurthy is today considered a young musical ambassador in the Indian music scene. Having initially received mridangam training with Damodaran Srinivasan over a telephonic setup in the U.S. and continuing advanced training from the mridangam maestro Guruvayur Dorai in India, Rohan has performed in hundreds of concerts in North America and India since the age of nine with leading Indian musicians like Prof. T.N. Krishnan, Dr. N. Ramani, R. K. Srikantan, Chitravina N. Ravikiran, S. Shashank, T. M. Krishna, S. Sowmya, etc.

He has been invited to perform for ten consecutive years during the celebrated December Music Season in Chennai, India and has spearheaded numerous cross-musical ventures with well-known symphony orchestras, jazz ensembles, and distinguished musicians including Grammy Award-winners Glen Velez and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Anoushka Shankar, and Ayano Ninomiya. He recently presented a weeklong performance of “Echoes,” a novel concerto for mridangam and string orchestra, with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, an event that attracted nearly 13,000 schoolchildren from across Michigan. “Echoes” has since been programmed by several professional orchestras in the U.S.

Rohan has presented numerous Indian percussion summer camps, workshops, academic lecture-demonstrations, and ambassadorial events throughout the U.S. and India, and is the recipient of several awards, including USA Today’s “All-College Academic Second Team,” “Young Artist of India” by Bharat Kalachar (Chennai, India), Thomas Siwe Scholarship from the Percussive Arts Society, and “Prodigy in Performing Arts” by the Indo-American Center in New York City.

An innovator, Rohan has redesigned the ancient mridangam to make it more user-friendly and durable. His work resulted in a publication in the premier music journal, Percussive Notes, last year. This past summer, Rohan conducted acoustical research on his new design at Coe College, Iowa, and was invited to present his work at the Acoustical Society of America’s annual conference in New Orleans, where his presentation received the “Best Student Paper” award.

Rohan’s multifaceted accomplishments earned him a one-on-one meeting and performance for the President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, at the presidential office and estate in New Delhi. The President commented, “You an expert in your field and are doing wonderful things to bridge cultures through music. You have a very bright future!”

This fall, Rohan will be entering a graduate program in ethnomusicology at the prestigious Eastman School of Music as a Provost’s Fellow.