I have known at least one of the listed musicians - Sameer, the bansuri player. I have known his father, too. Sameer has had a meteoric rise as a young musician, having already performed outside of India. Through music lovers who know him better, he has all the dedication required to reach higher.

Now the 10 day Nada Kishorotsava ( a competition for young atrtists ) are over, I can now safely add some of the following things.  Being the Judge in the eliminating and the final round, reducing the participants from 46 to 20 was it self  a difficult task.  More than 90% of the artists were capable of delivering real good stuff.  Therefore all the CDs and tapes from the participants, supplied to me with only identification numbers, were carefully heard with many prescribed parameters.  Ultimately the chosen twenty were invited to give live concerts at the Vasudevacharya Bhavana Auditorium of Nada Brahma Sangeetha Sabha, on JLB Road.  Even these twenty performers were evaluated very critically and the best male singer, best female singer, best instrumental player, best accompanist on both violin and mrudanga were chosen.  All the best performers were given a citation with a title 'NADA KISHORA / NADA KISHORI' and a purse.  The event took place on September third 2006.  The award was presented to the winners through the gracious hands of the Head of Chinmaya Mission in Karnataka Sri Sri Brahmaji.  The winners were SR Vinay, Bangalore, (Vocal), Priyanka Raman, Chennai (Vocal), Sameer L Rao, Mysore/Mumbai, (Instrumental), B Lakshmi, Bangalore and HM Sindhu, Mysore, (Violin) and A Radhesh, Mysore (mrudanga).  The performance of all the artists were of good standard.  Some had  professional approach in performing.  Those ten eveings were really nostalgic.

It may be of interest to note that six of the final 20 were the desciples of Vidvan RK Padmanabha of Bangalore.  The participants were from all over Karnataka, Chennai and Hyderabad.