Berklee College of Music, Boston, US has issued a scholarship programme in musician A.R Rahman’s name. The scholarship will be issued to one Indian student, to enter the 2016 under graduate programme at the college.
At an event held at his K.M conservatory last week to announce the scholarship, Rahman said that “We want this institution exchange to open minds and create magic”
He further added that “We want to make Indian musicians world leaders in music”
The buzz in the industry is that musical maestro A.R Rahman is about to produce two films, out of which one has been scripted by himself, and is rumoured to be directed by musician and ad filmmaker Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy.
Sources close to A.R says that he has launched his production company 4 years back and will be joining hands with Vishwesh to direct the movie, which is said to be set in North India. The film’s pre production works are said to be in progress and the casting will be done quite soon, they added.
Even though A.R and Vishwesh has earlier collaborated and directed TV shows like ‘The Dewarists’ and ‘Bring On The Night’ no official confirmations are available right now.
DJ Tominen aka Thomas Sebastian has been making music since the age of 11, in early 1990s influenced by top artists like Paul van Dyk, Shiller, ATB, Armin van Buuren, Talla 2xlc, to name a few. He glued himself to a style, dominated, and never switched!
So far Tominen has performed in more than 1000 gigs, composed of both major shows as well as small private parties. He has performed as lead act in several carnival, music festivals across India! He is currently the resident DJ at AvA Lounge, Dream Kochi, and has been holding the fort for over a year! He has also held residency at Zaika (Hamilton, New Zealand) and performed in numerous other clubs and events in New Zealand.
Tominen has also acted as opening set for Tenishia (Cyprus), Closing set for Dale Anderson (UK), Opening set for Mike Shiver (Sweden) at the SunBurn Reloaded 2013. He played a key role Island Music Festival 2014, highlighting many international artists, and also acted as Emcee & Stage Manager for the event.
Back in 2008, Tominen won 2 DJ competitions back to back, among them one was War of DJ’s Kerala, which was a national level competition. He was also voted as the #1 DJ in Kerala through CLUB FM’s poll in 2013, and another interesting fact is that he has been sold out to capacity for the past 3 New Year events. The pool side parties organized by Tominen and associates “The Saturday Splash” has became a huge hit. 2012 saw Tominen being a more active participant for the nourishment of Trance music, and he kick started his weekly cloud cast sessions known as Get Tranceformed with Tominen, which became a huge success that soon the local radio stations started airing the sessions.
Tominen has shared the stage with Nikhil Chinnapa, Ben Gold, Jaytech and Naved Khan in Island Music Festival 2014, with DJ Shadow at Valentine’s Day 2014 Party, with DJ Tejas & DJ Shireen Aida Khan at Desi Vibes. Some of his most noticed shows were the Templar Effect concerts in Kochi, Mangalore & Calicut, New Year Splash Pool Party at Crowne Plaza, Kochi, Bollywood Dhamaka at Gokulam Convention Centre, New Year 2013 and Closing set at Saturday Splash Dec 2013 featuring Vinayaka.
Tominen is also part of the artist duo Templar Effect and has performed and produced several records under the name! Demo’s of Tominen’s tracks are provided upon request, for the time being only demo’s will be available as none of the tracks have been officially released yet!
A recent study has shown that CD’s, mp3’s and digital music files are off the charts among youngsters and video-sharing website YouTube, music streaming service Spotify are their new best friends when it comes to listening to all their favourite music! According to studies by Finnish researchers both CD’s and digital downloads will be facing extinction in few years! They also added that according to a survey, as part of the research about 76% among 600 young adults from the university of Aalto rely on YouTube to listen to their favourite music.
YouTube and Spotify are by far the most popular music sources. The study found out that YouTube is the most frequently used service for listening as well as new music discovery. Many active Spotify users admitted that they use YouTube very often to overcome Spotify’s poor music selection! YouTube was also the most sharable music source by the Finnish students who took part in the survey.
“The popularity of YouTube is overwhelming. Nearly everyone uses it for listening to music,” said lead researcher Lassi A Liikkanen. He further added that “YouTube has transformed the digital media world and the practices of music listening. For the first time, we now have a scientific record of the big change that has taken place.”
Nestled in the scenic stunner Himachal Pradesh, lies Kasauli, the travellers paradise and this summer we’ve more reasons to head out there, other than the mystic mountains and its wilderness.
The Kasauli Rhythm & Blues Festival 2015 (KRBF) is all set to go! Happening at the Baikunth Resort, Himachal Pradesh, from April 3-5, KRBF is the annual music festival held by the Genesis Foundation. Started in 2012, with a view to grow its community of donors and well-wishers to help the critically ill under-privileged and orphan children under its care. The foundation strongly believes that music is a positive and participatory force, progressing change. 100% of the income from the fest will be used for the treatment of critically ill children.
Barefaced Liars, Do Dost, Sonam Kalra and Kutle Khan Sufi Collectives, Whirling Kalapas, Swarathma, Akshay Deodhar, The Supersonics, The Disparrows, Paree Forever (Suneeta Rao) and Rabbi Shergill are the featured artists!
The venue Baikunth Resorts is indeed the haven on earth located amidst 5 acres of green pine forest, surrounded by wilderness and with blue skies smiling at you.
Jay-Z has launched “TIDAL” the high fidelity music streaming service.
“This is a platform that’s owned by artists,” says Jay Z. According to Jay-Z this is supposed to be an artist friendly service, helping the artists to face the problems they are having in this age of online streaming!
TIDAL was launched last day, onstage with some of worlds best musicians, who were also supporting partners of this venture – Beyonce, Kanye West, Daft Punk, J. Cole, Rihanna, Madonna, Deadmau5, Jack White, Jason Aldean, Usher, and 2 members of Arcade Fire!
The launching presentation was certainly not as cool as those Apple product launches, it was normal in many ways! “the National Anthem” by “Radiohead” was playing as each of the partners signed the agreement, and Chris Martin of Coldplay, another partner was “skyped”, yeah you read it right! “Skyped!”
Jay-Z just unleashed hell fire on other streaming services in the market right now like Spotify, which is major in the scene, also Apple Inc. has to be beware of TIDAL too, as they have plans to link up with BEATS and launch a music streaming service later this year!
During the launching ceremony Alicia Keys suggested that TIDAL will “forever change the course of music history”
Let us all wait and watch if its gonna be true or will it end up as another money making venture!
Shibani Kashyap, the renowned Indian singer, composer and performer is longing to work along with the mozart of Madras, A.R. Rahman!
The singer who has been generating noticeable ripples in the Bollywood industry began her career with Ho Gayi Hai Mohabbat (1998) which won her the Channel V award. She debuted as a playback singer in Waisa Bhi Hota Hai (2003) and has sung in movies like Zinda (2006), 1971 (2007)
She won the best female Pop singer award for her album Nazakat, at the 2005 Sangeet Awards held in San Francisco. Shibani was also awarded JAI 19th National Award as Best Singer of India. She has also appeared on home screens as a judge for the music show Bathroom Singer on Sahara Filmy channel, sang the title track for the television serial Akela on Sony Entertainment Television, and also sang title track for the 2012 Pakistani television serial Mohabbat Jai Bhar Mein in Urdu language which turned out as a major hit.
Shibani along with other 29 independent artists is part of Hungama Digital Media’s new independent music venture ArtistAloud.com.
She collaborated with Mika Singh for the song “Soneya” and Shibani has just finished recording for the Meet Brothers and is working with the music composers of Jazbaa on a track for a film starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. She is also working along with Astitva, Rabbi Shergill on a project recreating yesteryear melodies.
She is performing live all around the country and has also performed for the republic day function of Mauritius. Her recent gig in Chennai was a crowd-pleaser.
Paradigm Shift the rock act from Mumbai, active since 2009. Sporting a musical blend of Indian classical with progressive rock, the band is just awe!
The current lineup consist of Kaushik Ramachandran on vocals, Chinmay Agharkar and Desikan Gopalan on guitar, Nikhil Nandakumar on violin, Ariel Samson on bass, Aamir Ismail Shaikh drums.
They released their debut album Coalescence on 23rd of April, 2012.
The band released “Roja – A tribute to A.R. Rahman” which got them the attention of the whole nation.
They have been playing all around the country, in many reputed universities, venues and festivals.
Their facebook https://www.facebook.com/paradigmshiftraaga?fref=ts
Penn Masala is worlds first and premier Hindi A Cappella group, born 1996 with a strong desire to create music that erase and go beyond the traditional cultural boundaries, to capture the experience of growing up during the competition between progressing eastern and western culture. They were the pioneers to bring the traditional Indian music style to cappella and has been in the forefront of South Asian – Western fusion ever since!
The band members are Akiff Premjee, Varshil Patel, Anil Chitrapu, Dilip Rajan, Ashwin Muthiah, Prashant Ramesh, Chetan Khanna, Aneesh Kanakamedala, Brendan McManus, Pranay Sharma, Hari Ravi, Praveen Rajaguru and Kashish Hora. They have released 11
albums since their inception and has played in loads of international venues still today.
The latest from Penn Masala “the Bollywood Breakdown” is storming their YouTube channel! According to them the track is their attempt at something different and to show the world about their view that the music they grew up listening to i.e. the Bollywood music as well as the Western, is no different to them!
Their unique blend of Hip-Hop, Pop and Bollywood music, along with groundbreaking sounds, beats, and rhythms new to the South Asian A cappella scene, is something different and unique, that captures anybody’s attention. Well, the rising number of hits for the track on their YouTube channel is indeed a proof that it has got the worlds attention!
Ricky Kej is the Grammy winning Indian Composer/Music Producer/Musician.
Born in North Carolina, US, he is half-Punjabi, half-Marwari by birth. When Ricky was 8, his family relocated to India. By Education Ricky is a dentist, but never pursued a career in that field, and instead followed his passion for music and ended up as a Grammy winning musician.
Ricky is a maestro when t comes to the keyboard, manuscript page and recording studio. He has won multiple awards and nomination for his musical endeavours. He has created music for 5 motion pictures, 12 albums under Universal Music and more than 3000 TVC and radio ads!
One of his noticeable works were the original compositions he had done for the cricket World Club 2012, which gained him applaud for his musical artistry and execution. He was “national Youth Icon” for the year 2012 and has also won VH1’s “India Rules Artist” award.
His Critically acclaimed and Grammy winning album “Winds of Samsara” is a collaboration with South African flautist “Wouter Kellerman” which debuted #1 on Billboard and stayed top for almost 10 to 12 weeks!
Ricky’s music is a combination of keen sense of cross culture harmony, melody and pacing! He blends cutting edge music technology as well as traditional instruments from both Indian and European origins into his music, irrespective of its genre or age. He currently runs two state of the art studios in Bangalore, the Raveolution Studios, where most of the works right from inception to finalised version of his album “Winds of Samsara” was created.
The Bengaluru based Grammy winning musician strongly sticks to the opinion that Bollywood is dominating the Indian music industry and here indie artistes only have two options – to find audiences abroad or join the Hindi film industry!
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