Dikshitar Compositions Day

Shruti Laya cordially invites you to participate in the Dikshitar Compositions Day festival on Saturday, December 12, 2015.

Following the hugely successful tradition of Shruti Laya Composers Days (Annamacharya Day in 2008, Purandaradasa Day in 2009 and Papanasam Sivan Day in 2010, and Swathi Thirunal Day in 2011, Sanskrit compositions Day 2012, Telugu compositions day 2013, Tamil Compositions Day in 2014), Shruti Laya is planning another composers day this year.

A lot of thought went into thinking of a fitting subject for this years program. As you know, we have cycled through several composers and languages. Our emphasis has always been on encouraging our children to learn new compositions, and thus we ended up leaving out Trinity compositions, which are the heart of Carnatic Music.

We would like to fill this gap now starting with the compositions of Sri. Muthuswamy Dikshitar for 2015. We would still like to encourage teaching new compositions to the children, so please consider this in your song choices.

We invite all students of music and dance to perform in groups. Performances will be grouped by the teacher, so please contact your teacher immediately and have her or him contact Shruti Laya with details of the participants. Artists and teachers in our area are also invited to participate on their own. In order to defray some of the costs of this program, there will be a Five Dollar participation fee per participant

The program will follow a similar format as in the previous years with one 60-90 minute grand concert at the end, and each teacher's group being given about 15 minutes to perform (for groups of three or more. Time will be reduced for smaller groups). The performances will consist of singing/dancing/playing on instruments of Sri. Muthuswamy Dikshitar's compositions (only).

In addition to the student groups, we also plan to have a grand musical concert or dance performance at the end of the day.

Going by the response to our previous composers' days, we expect to have upwards of a hundred participants. As before, we would like to avoid repetitions, and would like to ask teachers to inform us as soon as possible their choice of songs.

This is the chance for all our young artists to sing or perform on stage, and show their skills. Due to the expected large turnout, we prefer group performances. Shruti Laya will work with the area music and dance teachers, so please contact your teacher if you want to participate. If you are a music or dance teacher and would like your students to participate (or if you are an artist and would like to participate yourself), please contact us.