Chitravina N Ravikiran (born 1967) is a prodigious composer in the 20th and 21st centuries. His compositions number about 800, of which about 750 are Indian classical music and dance, the rest being creations for Western Classical Orchestras, Jazz, Rock and World music ensembles centered around his concept, Melharmony.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Early start
In 1969, two-year-old Chitravina N. Ravikiran became the world's youngest performer and in the process was bestowed with the blessing of sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar's words, "If you don't believe in God, just look at Ravikiran." Ravikiran's first attempt at new creations was also around this age of 2 when he discovered musical scales that had not been used before such as the Indian raga, Choodamani (named after his mother). He has subsequently discovered ragas like Snehapriya, Keshavapriya, Shivanandini, Andhakarini, Shivamanohari, Mohini, Garudapriya and Katyayini.
Dance Creations Video
Musical Forms
Ravikiran has handled various traditional Carnatic forms like kriti, varnam, javali, tillana and padam as well as North Indian forms like bhajans and folk forms like chindu. He has also innovated a form called swarakrti. He is also a rare example of a composer to have used five languages - Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Hindi. Most of his compositions include the signature phrase (mudra), Ravi-Shashi and a few rare ones sport the word, Ravikiran. He has also composed practice forms for students such as geetams.
Unique Creations
He was also the first prominent musician to have created pieces in each of the 35-talas (seven basic talas multiplied by the five metres). He is also credited with a unique 72-mela ragamalika geetam, a 13-part piece, which covers all the 72 principal ragas of Carnatic music in just 7 minutes. His other interesting works include a 5-language composition, Shree rama pattabhishekame, the Dasha-Ranjani Tillana featuring 10 ragas whose names end with the word Ranjani and the Pancha-Raga-Tala-Jati malika tillana which traverses 5 talas and ragas.
Select Traditional compositions
Dance Compositions & Productions
Ravikiran's dance creations cover a variety of forms - ''pada varnams, shabdam, kavuttuvam, pushpanjali'' apart from ''padams, javalis'' and ''tillanas''. His dance collaborators and choreographers in operatic or other creations include Pt Birju Maharaj, Prof C V Chandrashekar, Dr Vyjayantimala Bali, Adyar Lakshman, Guru Rhadha, Guru Savitry Jagannatha Rao. He has also created music for contemporary dance productions such as ''Cosmos, Pushed to the Edge, Illusion to Resolution'' with dance companies in USA, Canada, Australia and India such as Natya Dance Theatre & Shirley Mordine Dance Company (Chicago), Sampradaya Dance Creations (Toronto), Bharatalaya Academy (Melbourne) and Kanopy Dance Company (Madison).
Operatic Creations
Ravikiran composed the Operatic dance creation, Lakshmi Prabhavam in 1997 which was staged in USA and India as a music-dance production featuring about 30-35 musicians and dancers. His other operas include:
- Savitri
- Vinayaka Vaibhavam
- Ramayana - Bala Kandam
- Ramayana - Yuddha Kandam
- Mahabharata - Karna Shapatam
- Mahabharata - Geetopadesham
- Almighty Trinity
Tunesmith
Ravikiran has also set to music almost 1500 verses, poems or compositions of other composers including his historic effort of setting music to 1330 tirukkural verses of ancient Tamil moralist poet, Tiruvalluvar in an unimaginable 16 hours (in Jan 2016) apart from divya prabandham verses of azhwars, select verses from Bhagavad Gita, verses from ancient Tamil sangam literature, compositions of Purandara Dasa, D V Gundappa and select contemporary composers.
Melharmony & World Music
Ravikiran is celebrated as the creator of Melharmony in world music. Melharmony is a unique approach to music that explores "Western style harmony but anchored on melodic progression".
Select Melharmonic Creations
Source of the article : Wikipedia
EmoticonEmoticon