Narmadha

Narmadha is a popular violinist who excels in Carnatic and Hindustani music. Her father, MS Gopalakrishnan, is a renowned violinist who is a recipient of the honorary Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan. Narmadha’s mother is a vocalist, Mrs. Meenakshi Goplakrishnan. Narmadha received her initial violin training from Parur A Sundaram Iyer, her grandfather. She also learned the violin techniques from her father, MSG. Her grandpa started teaching her when she was four years. She also learned vocals from her mother and then from Sangeetha Kalanidhi Shri TM Thyagarajan. It is not easy to go with both instrumental and vocal and Narmadha excelled in it. With the perfect guidance of her parents and her grandfather, she shined well in both fields.

Narmadha did a doctoral course and got a degree from Delhi University. Professor Debu Chowdary and musicologist Dr. KG Ginde mentored her doctoral thesis about comparing South Indian and North Indian music styles. Her thesis was published as a book, Indian Music and Sancara in Raagas. As a third-generation artist from a musical family, Narmadha made her family proud of her musical skills. Narmadha is a gold medalist too. She was honored with the Best Violinist Award by the Music Academy in Madras. She received the award eight times, consecutively. Narmadha has more than four decades of experience as a solo violinist. She had done more than 7000 concerts. Besides the violin concerts, she had also performed vocal concerts in India and the UK, US, South Africa, Holland, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Spain.

Narmadha had also attended concerts with her father and also performed Hindustani and Carnatic styles in Jugalbandi. Narmadha always has a special place in the legendary world of Indian Classical Music. Her service to the music brought her enormous awards and some of them are Kalaimamani from Tamilnadu Government, Shanmukhananda Sangeeta Sabha, Mumbai’s Shanmukhananda Sangeeta Shiromani, Music Today Group, Mumbai’s Best Accomplished Violinist award, Mahamountirth Ashram, Ujjain’s Shantidoot Award and Bharatam in Thrissur’s Vadya Bharati award.

Narmadha founded a music school, SANCARA, which teaches violin, vocals and musicology. The musical style of Parur MSG is being taught here. Besides this, Narmadha teaches music through online classes.