Tirupati, July 27, 2013: Sri Thyagaraja Festival Committee has announced the conduct of the 71st annual edition of the Festival of Music and Dance at Sri Thyagaraja Mandapam here from July 28 to August 6.

The festival will be formally declared open by N. Murali, Director, The Hindu and president of The Music Academy, Chennai, while the TTD’s Executive Officer M.G. Gopal will preside over the inaugural session. Reputed artistes from all over Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala will perform at the festival. ‘Padma Bhushan’ T.N. Krishnan will perform a violin concert on the inaugural day, while Maharajapuram S. Ramachandran, Manda Sudharani, Malladi Suribabu, Srungeri H.S. Nagaraj (all vocal), Manjusri Panda (Odissi dance), Geetha Krishnamurthi (Veena) and M.V. Simhachala Sastri (Harikatha) are among the other prominent artistes performing during the ten-day music fest.

This year’s ‘Sapthagiri Sangeetha Vidwanmani’ title will be conferred on Trichur V.Ramachandran (vocal) and Mannargudi A. Eswaran (Mrudangam) at a grand ‘Sadas’ to be held on August 4, where R. Srinivasan, Managing Director of Redington India Limited and R.T. Chari, Managing Director of TAG Corporation will take part. “We have brought down the number of concerts this year from the usual 33 to 20, owing to financial constraints,” explained K.V. Ranganathan, the Executive Chairman of Sri Thyagaraja Trust at a media conference on Friday.

Source: The Hindu, DT. July 27, 2013.