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Adyar D Balasubramani is one of the most sought after nadaswaram artists in Chennai. An All India Radio ‘A’ Grade Artist, he has been performing for the last 25 years in leading sabhas in and outside of Chennai. Having played in over 250 movies, Adyar D Balasubramani has also toured with various music directors including D Imman, amongst others.  

Jaya Rathakrishnan is a Singaporean bilingual screenwriter for local Indian television programmes in Singapore. She has written several screenplays for television dramas, including Mani, Parambarai, Vettai (Pledged to Hunt) and Vyjayanthi—all of which went on to bag several awards. Parambarai was also critically acclaimed overseas.

 

Jaya has worked with Eaglevision, Mediacorp since 2001 with eleven years of experience in television production and screenwriting. She started off as an assistant producer and started specialising in writing and producing thereafter.

M Rajendran is a young thamuru artist who performs regularly in prominent folk festivals around Tamil Nadu. He is also a parai artist, and brings to stage a powerful and unforgettable presence through his instruments. 

M Vijay is a young satti artist whose passion and infectious joy in playing the instrument comes through in his presence on stage. A regular performer in folk festivals around Tamil Nadu, M Vijay is also a parai artist. 

M T Aditya Srinivasan is no stranger to the stage, having accompanied several renowned Indian classical musicians in concerts, such as Bombay Jayashri, M Balamuralikrishna, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Rakesh Chaurasia, Anuradha Sriram, Sriram Parasuram, Unnikrishnan, Ranjani-Gayatri, and Anil Srinivasan.  

 

A graduate of the Berklee College of Music and a Fellow of The Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, Berklee College of Music, Aditya performed as a multi-percussionist with the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, sharing the stage with the Berklee Indian Ensemble, Danilo Perez, Antonio Sanchez and other members of Paco de Lucia’s band, Bruno Raberg, and Allan Chase.  

 

A recipient of the prestigious IRAA award in both 2019 and 2020, the latest in Aditya’s list of achievements is working with famed composers Anirudh Ravichander, Vidyasagar, and Sean Roldan on various successful projects.  

Mythili Prakash belongs to a new generation of classical Indian dancers. She is one of the most celebrated and respected young bharatanatyam dancer-choreographers today. A second generation Indian and American artist, Mythili has positioned herself as a global and cosmopolitan artist through her unique experiences and collaborations. Her repertoire is an embodiment of narratives of the many worlds that shape her. 

 

Raised in Los Angeles, she grew up in an environment filled with dance and music, under the watchful eye of her mother and teacher dance exponent Viji Prakash. Mythili began her performing career with her solo debut in India at the age of eight and has since performed extensively in prestigious venues and festivals throughout the world. She has studied with several legendary stalwarts from India and is trained and mentored by iconic artists Malavika Sarukkai and Akram Khan. 

 

Nominated by Akram Khan as “choreographer of the future” for UK-based Dance Umbrella’s Four by four commissions, Mythili premiered her solo work HERE and NOW at their 2019 Festival. In 2021 she received the National Dance Project Touring Grant from NEFA for She’s Auspicious, which previewed in Hamburg at the Reflektor Festival curated by musician Anoushka Shankar. 

 

Mythili was also a principal dancer in Akram Khan Company’s Outwitting the Devil, which toured internationally. 

 

In 2022, she created a trilogy of pieces, beginning with AR | DHA – a commission for the 90th anniversary festival of Jacob’s Pillow, and concluding with ONE | ALL for Festival in Motion, one of the first-of-its-kind site-specific dance festivals in Qatar, surrounding the World Cup 2022. 

N Deepan is a prominent parai artist who aspires to dispel misconceptions about the parai through his performances and engaging the audience in a dialogue about minority discrimination. Keen to bring awareness to the importance of the parai art form, Deepan included local Tamil folk arts in his awareness programmes together with his brother, and continues to spread the joy for the instrument through classes and performances. 

One of the most gifted and sought after Carnatic percussionists of the current generation, Sumesh Narayanan has trained with mridangam Maestro Sangita Kalanidhi Dr Thiruvaarur Bakthavathsalam for two decades and continues to learn from him. 

 

Sumesh is a rare combination of a musician who aspires to master the rich traditions of the mridangam oeuvre in the Carnatic style while retaining an open and larger world view, which allows him to be part of many innovative and cross disciplinary ventures to which he is a vital contributor and much admired for his ideas and energetic playing. 

 

Sumesh is also one of the creative directors of Sound Creed LLP, a record label company that aspires to create musical and artistic experiences that unifies the universal language of art and establish a strong dialogue between the collaborators and the collaborations. 

Sushma Soma is an award-winning Karnatik vocalist. Recognised as one of the passionate ‘youths driving positive change through their actions’ and as one of the ’10 women leaders in music’ in Singapore, Sushma was awarded the Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council, the highest honour for young arts practitioners in Singapore. 

 

As a collaborator and soloist, Sushma has performed in some of the world-renowned stages and festivals including Kalaa Utsavam in Singapore, The Madras Music Academy, Kabira Festival in Varanasi, Jaipur Lit Fest, with Mythili Prakash at the Festival in Motion curated under the Qatar Creates series of performances for FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and Reflektor Festival curated by Anoushka Shankar at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, amongst others. 

 

Sushma is a part time lecturer at the National Institute of Education in Singapore and is a member on the advisory panel for the Singapore International Festival of Arts. 

 

Sushma's recent works focus on raising awareness about the environment and sustainability and finding her voice to express the same through her Karnatik training. 

 

Her album HOME, created with American composer and musician Aditya Prakash, received critical acclaim. Reviewed as “One of the finest albums about environment and wildlife…”, tracks from HOME also featured in BBC Radio, Songlines Magazine, RollingStone India and NHK Japan. The editor in chief of Songlines, Simon Broughton, also called HOME a “powerful statement about what we are doing to our planet and our environment.”

 

Following her release of HOME, Sushma sang in the production The Jungle Book Reimagined, produced by Akram Khan Company. The production reinvented the journey of Mowgli through the eyes of a refugee caught in a world devastated by the impact of climate change. Sushma also released a single with the label 99Chants on their latest album, Imaginary Landscapes, which seeks to raise awareness for climate change and sustainable solutions.