Four artistes, scholars talk about Music Academy library. Video series

Sangita Kalanidhi-designate T. M. Krishna has just launched an online video series where artistes and scholars who made good use of the library of The Music Academy (some 90 years old now) share their experiences.

The series starts with a conversation with writer-historian and Academy secretary V. Sriram on his days spent here and his own notable readings on Carnatic music.

Till about recently, this place, in the ground floor of the Kasturi Srinivasan hall in the Academy campus was a lifeless space, though its collection of rare books, manuscripts and notes mounted, with donations made by artistes, scholars and families ingrained in Carnatic music.

Sriram’s entry into the Academy as secretary and the professional hands of veteran librarian Mysore Jagadish who is a trained mridangam artiste, changed the face of the space – it was turned into a bright, well-catalogued library and has used technology well to do among other things, digitize the collection.

The four-part video series will feature artiste Aiswarya Sankar, Prof. R S Jayalaksmi and scholar-artiste. Sumitra Vasudev and is to be released from time to time.

Here is the weblink to the first episode – https://youtube.com/watch?v=0IWpqVtKZfA…