As you all know I am currently working on the BBC project. Kalasangam, one of the leading organisations in the UK, has invited me to collaborate with the musicians of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in their Global Echoes Festival which is going to be held as a part of the Millennium Project in different parts of UK in October 2000.

Most of the compositions for that project have been completed. I was there in March for some rehearsals and in the last week of July for more rehearsals and tightening the loose ends. We have four concerts at this point in time and more may be coming in depending on the schedules of the various artistes. All of us are looking forward to this project.

I have actually talked with the BBC musicians and decided on a four part presentation for each of these concerts which they were also very happy about.

One is going to be a strict Carnatic classical part where I'll be playing solos with accompaniments and then there is going to be a strict Classical Western part which the musicians of the BBC Phil will be playing.

Then there will be a part where everybody will be rendering some of my compositions and another part where I will also be involved in some of their Western compositions that we are all going to be playing together. So, all in all it is a very exciting thing to be involved in right now.

But I want to tell you about another project I am involved in called Om Ganesha. This is going to be a music-dance production which is going to be premiered in Portland, Oregon on September 29 followed by another in Seattle the next day.

This is a very, very beautiful theme. Ganesha is the favourite idol and deity for a lot of people in India and many parts around the world too in these days of multiculturalism. And I was invited by one Jayanthi Raman who is a disciple of Adyar Lakshmanan Sir in Portland to work on this project and this is being done with the aid of the Portlanders, the Oregon State Government and other organisations

Jayanthi is a very talented dancer and we had this wonderful project conceived and discussed various episodes and I have started composing songs for it.

What we thought of was an evening with about 5 6 different stories of Ganesha. The first one is about the birth of Ganesha and how he became the elephant-faced God. Then there is the Kubera episode, the Gnanapalam episode, the Avvaiyar episode …

Basically the way it is going to work is that I compose whenever I am inspired. There could be one in February, I tape all the songs as I compose them and send it to the dancers - we are all working remote on this project as you can easily guess. The dancers are in Portland and some of them are in other parts of the country as well.

The vocalist is going to be one Kala Ganapathy who is in Los Angeles, she's again a disciple of mine - a telestudent as well. I have sent her the tapes, she will practice them and be in touch with the dancers and meet them.

Since I am familiar with teleteaching now I am doing teleproductions. It's been working well so far!

People keep asking me what my first dance drama project was. I actually set to tune a Kuchipudi ballet when I was 15 years old and I don't even remember seeing the production at that time!

My first real good project was in 1997, called Lakshmi Prabhavam. This was for the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival. Originally I was supposed to do this with the noted composer Thanjavur Shankara Iyer, but he was indisposed and I had to do it on my own. It was the first of its kind on Goddess lakshmi. We had 20 shows all over the US with some repeat shows and it was very well received. I took 23 people with me from Madras for that production.

Then there was another project called Savithri, done in Australia. In the National Theatre in Melbourne, we had about six shows of that all in the same theatre.

Then I worked with another Canadian composer, Dr Timothy Sullivan, who lives in Toronto. This was for a project called Cosmos. Each of these projects would make a column in itself!

As a composer there are different ways in which I compose. Sometimes I just compose for the sake of it. More by inpiration. Many of my Carnatic music compositions are like that. Sometimes I do it in almost in my sleep and I don't even get up, just scribble it and look at it in the morning! That way I am very lazy!

But composing for a specific assignment is different. There you have to discipline myself and condition yourself and set yourself certain boundaries and work within it.

I personally like to compose every single note in whatever project I work on. This is not because of ego or anything, but more because of the integrity of the whole work. Os if I were to compose some pieces and borrow others from other composers then there could be stylistic clashes. Unless that is going to be the intent of the project itself.

In OmGanesha we may take something from Avvayar's works. That is part of the work. In Lakshmi Prabhavam there were slokams, there were poems, viruthams, varnams, thillanas - all composed by me. And it was a four language production. Om Ganesha is 2 languages so far and I have done about 2/3 of the composition.

Whether we can maintain quality and excellence in a production in which the key people are located in different parts of the world is a very vital question that may occur to you.

Communication has improved tremendously now- we are all in touch by e-mail everyday, and the lucky thing is that I keep traveling a lot and it is not difficult to drop by for a few days and have a few rehearsals.

Many of them are professionals and good artistes and they can work on them and practice with a bit of co-ordination.

A non-commissioned project that I started of my own volition was Mahabharatha. I have not decided on how long the piece is going to be. It may take me ten years to finish it! I am not working to any deadline. Only a couple of songs have been done so far. An invocatory piece on Ganesha in Bowli...

My image is always as Chitravina Ravikiran even for vocal concerts. People have started recognizing me as a composer. 1997 was a big year for me, and that is when people started recognising me as a composer. Lakshmi Prabhavam was the turning point.