Chennai: People say couples who have twins are the luckiest, as their children not only learn from each other, but also understand and work together to reach their goals.
Meet Ullagaram-based Carnatic vidwans, Midathuri V Shruthee and Midathuri V Kruthee (18) in the city who have won close to 50 awards combined.
The duo is now famously known as ‘Chennai Sisters’. This reporter interacted with them to know their journey so far.
Excerpts:
How did you both develop interest in music?
We hail from a family of musicians. Our father V Venkataramanan works in a music firm for the past 33 years and our mother V Gnaneswari too loves music. Our great grand father professor Midathuri Pasupathy Iyer was a great vocalist and rendered his service for music as HOD in M G University, Kottayam. Our aunts are also vocalists.
One of them, B Vasantha, is a multi-lingual cine playback singer with more than two decades of experience. Our cousin, S Thaman is a famous music director scoring music for many films. With such a background and an environment, we naturally embraced music.
When did you start learning Carnatic music?
Our parents enrolled us in a music class when we were just five-and-a-half years old. Carnatic vocalist Geetha was our first guru. Later we studied under Rajalakshmi Srinivasan. As of today, we are practising under Sivasankari Venkatraman, the disciple of legendary Carnatic vocalist Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, who was also the guru of M S Subbalakshmi.
Talk to us about your professional career.
We started our professional stage performances in 2006, rendering Carnatic numbers on almost a daily basis at sabhas, music festivals, temple kumbhabishekams. So far, we have performed 75 live concerts including Sri Purandaradasar Bhakta Samajam (2012), Bharat Vikas Parished (2013), Papanasam Sivam Carnataka Sangeetha Sabha (2014).
We did our 50th live concert at Tirupathi Devasthanam on 26 March, 2014. We also did a special live concert at Dr Sivanthi Aaditanar Ninaivu Illam on 21 April, 2016.
We were given vidwan status after rendering Pancharatna Kritis at Thiruvaiyaru on 167th Aradhana of Sathguru Thyagaraja in 2014 along with Carnatic legends, Sudha Ragunathan, Mahathi, O S Arun, Mandlin U Shrinivas, Haridwara Mangalam A K Palanivel, etc.
What would you both rate as your biggest achievements.
Throughout our stint with Carnatic music, we have bagged over 50 awards. Our biggest achievement was winning first prize in the grand finale among 800 participants of the Bajan Samrat on 29 December, 2016 in Chennai.
We were also awarded a cash prize in IMCT’s competition conducted by Padma Subrahmanyam in association with Sastra University at Meenakshi Collage, Kodambakkam, recently.
How do you balance academics and music.
We did our schooling in Adambakkam. While we are into music, we give equal importance to academics. We work hard together and that helps us excel in studies as well. In fact, we both got the same marks in classes 10 and 12. We are now pursuing B Com while simultaneously pursuing Bachelor of Music at Madras University under dual degree programme.
Your other areas of interest?
We are also learning violin under our guru Anand and sanskrit sloka while we also learnt yoga in the past.
We are experts in creating mehendi designs and also love elocution, that helped us participate in a Guinness record for an awareness speech on drugs at our college recently. We have great reverence for Tamil which helped us win first prize in a national-level on-spot composition on Thirvalluvar conducted by CBSE Expression series on Thiruvalluvar Day in 2015.
We love automobiles especially motorcycles. Right from school days we used to admire them. We were a part of Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Southern Section and competed in automobile related competitions. We bagged the first prize for making a toy which is capable of moving through air thrust in SAEs 2010 Olympics conducted in association with Ashok Leyland. We also learnt riding motorcycles and are planning to undertake long ride expeditions soon.
Chennai Sisters can be contacted at 9940152612, 8637404859.