Carnatic music lovers continue to lose some of the greatest vocalists and legendary instrumentalists. They are emotionally struggling to come to grips with the sudden passing away of Sangeetha Kalanidhi Sri T.N.Krishnan.
To ardent devotees of CTU, the loss of Sri T.N.Krishnan will be even more difficult to swallow. He had quite an intimate relationship with Chicago Tyagaraja Utsavam even from the very beginning of the organization.
In the early days, we were running the annual Utsavam for just one day. In 1985, for the first time, we were fortunate to find that Sri T.N.Krishnan was passing through Chicago during the Memorial Day weekend. The core volunteers were keen on organizing his concert at a nice hall instead of school gyms and acoustically poor halls. In my school days and college days, I have attended many concerts of Madurai Mani Iyer, Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer, Ariyakkudi Ramanuja Iyengar, GNB and all accompanied by Sri T.N.Krishnan on the violin at Singarachari Hall, Hindu High School Triplicane etc. In those days, Parthasarathy Swamy Sabha used to rent this hall to run their programs. I was really excited to organize the first ever professional program that too of such a legendary violinist. CN Krishnaswamy, an ardent volunteer of CTU had great connections with Wheaton College and was able to get their special concert auditorium to CTU for free!!. None of us could dream of such a superb hall even now! He spent many hours editing the concert tapes in three cassettes and we wanted Krishnan’s music to reach Carnatic music lovers across the Midwestern United States. We were selling in three cassettes his unique concert for just $5 that would not cover even the cost of the tapes.
That was the time when we also noticed during the Utsavam, the melodious violin performance by a musically gifted boy Srikanth Venkatraman. His parents were keen on getting professional training for his son from Sri T.N.Krishnan. Krishnan had come with his wife and daughter and they found in Sharada and Venkatraman, excellent hosts. They offered their house to Krishnan’s family so that it could as well be a Gurukulam for Srikanth. Initially, Srikanth learnt from two local teachers Ranjani Narayanswamy and Manjula Rao and he was lucky to get training right at home from Sri T.N.Krishnan. When I requested Sri T.N.Krishnan to teach him major kritis and not simple ones like Nada Tanumanisam, he chose to train him the kriti Nada Tanumanisam with all the subtleties. Krishnan suggested that Srikanth could come to India and continue to learn from him. In fact Srikanth spent a summer in India and continued his music lessons staying in New Delhi where Professor T.N.Krishnan was attached to Delhi University music department.
Krishnan performed in the annual CTU festival again in May 1994 and another time in Chicago in September 2007, as part of a program organized by Professor Balachandran on behalf of Shankara Netralaya as part of a fundraising program.
Sri Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu Garu preferred to be a soloist and occasionally in AIR programs he used to have his disciples like Sri Marella Kesava Rao for a duet accompaniment. However Sri. T.N. Krishnan, Sri. Lalgudi Jayaraman and Sri. MS Gopalakrishnan, the leading violin accompaniment artists of those days would virtually elevate and enhance the vocal performances of all veteran musicians by their distinct styles. I used to wonder how T.N.Krishnan could simply reproduce many portions of the vocalists’ ghamakas sung just a few minutes back. Professor C.S.Seshadri, a world renowned mathematician and founder of the Chennai Mathematics Institute used to mention that the real strength of T.N.Krishnan was his solid bowing technique that he never lost even at age 90. One could feel his bowing quite masculine with certain heaviness. His accompaniment to a concert of M.D.Ramanathan singing at athi vilambit speed would challenge any instrumentalist and only people like T.N.Krishnan could handle such singers soaked in conservative music.
I met him for the last time when there was a special condolence program for Sri M.S.Gopalakrishnan.
He will live in the hearts of ardent Carnatic music lovers through his recorded music and also through one’s own personal collections of concerts of veteran musicians that he enhanced by his unique style.
In grief,
Dr. T.E.S. Raghavan