On December 15 evening, the evenly packed audience broke into a series of applauses for the Sangita Kalanidhi-designate, vocalist Sanjay Subrahmanyam.
The applause was warm and long.
On the evening when the Academy drew up the curtain on its 89th Conference and Concerts, late by 10 minutes, the focus was on Sanjay.
And as he made a long but well-written speech, he had most people in the audience all ears.
As he traced his career that had its roots in a large family which was wholly into Carnatic music and the big break he made on the concert stage, Sanjay made a few key points that deserve mention.
He touched on the 1980s era when a body like YACM ( Youth Association for Carnatic Music) played a key and significant role in providing the stage for dozens of young artistes to make the grade and set the path for a dozen or more to go on be great artistes of today - he is one of them.
He touched on the hard work that an artiste has to put it before he or she can perform a composition. "One has to sing it at least fifty times in our practice rooms."
He touched on how the exposure to nadaswaram has helped him to discover the depth of music - he himself went on to study under vidwan Semponarkoil S R D Vaidyanathan.
And he touched on the special-ness of singing Thamizh songs ( which he does a lot and has done so for many years) which allows the rasika to appreciate the music layered in the language of the mother tongue.
And, Sanjay showered praise on all the accompanists who had performed alongside him. He named them and told us how they had enriched his knowledge.
Sanjay's speech also had dashes of dry humor but evidently, he was soaked in emotion - as his wife and two children ( he mentioned them in his address) watched this milestone event unfold on an aesthetically-designed stage on Tuesday evening - the evening typical of Chennai's December winter, a dash of chill and a fairly large audience.
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