Sadas at The Music Academy

Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, the chief guest at the Sadas of The Music Academy on January 1, 2011 was the coolest person on stage that evening.

Dressed informally among a distinguished set of senior and young artistes who were to be recognised at this august function, he was an intent professor.

On stage, he listened intently to every speaker at the podium and seemed to enjoy his presence there. As he said later in his speech - he has been attending concerts for many years now and many at the Academy but never imaged that one day he would be invited to be the chief guest at the sadas!

The Laureate kept his speech brief and straight - he had not even prepared one for this occasion. Yes, he did link science and math and music in different ways one can imagine but there were two points he highlighted.

One - to salute the artistes who have sacrificed a lot to pursue a career in the performing arts. Two - to encourage children to take to the arts even though the pressures to get them into medicine, engineering or IT is huge.

This was a big evening for the Bombay Sisters who were decorated with the Sangita Kalanidhi title. They dedicated it to their parents.

It was also a big day for dance guru Radha, senior vocalist Suguna Varadachari, vidwans Manakkal Rangarajan and Parassala Ponnamal. All of them were presented different titles.

Awards and endowments for various prize winners in the concerts and competitions held here were also given to the artistes, going down to teenagers. Abhishek Raguraman must have got the biggest round of applause.