He received the 'Sangeetha Kala Nipunaa' title from The Mylapore Fine Arts Club during the December Season 2001.

This instrumentalist has been prolifically working on fusion albums recently. He spoke to Kutcheribuzz about his experiences.

People know about your brilliant career as a musician. But you have in recent years been traveling abroad extensively and collaborating with musicians from overseas. Tell us about your special performances abroad.

In 2001, John McCoughlin, Zakhir Hussain, Selvaganesh and myself went on a world tour with 'Remember Shakthi 2'. The original Shakthi group comprised L. Shankar, John McCoughlin, Zakhir Hussain and. Vinayakram. Four years ago, they came up with 'Remember Shakthi 1'. The second group featured Hariprasad Chaurasia, John McCoughlin, Vinayakaram and Zakhir Hussain.

The 'Remember Shakthi' group came together in 1999. Our first concert was in Jerusalem. It was such a wonderful experience to visit the historical church there. Something I had never dreamt of. I also performed at Lebanon, Greece and many other countries. At Greece I had the honour of performing at the Acropolis, where I have heard that only Yanni has performed. I was very moved.

Recently I also worked with Michael Nyman, the music director of the movie 'Piano'. He won the Oscar award for the film. In October, I played with him in Rome. He is a Western classical musician and I played with his orchestra. It was very well received. We had to sit together for a week because there are many differences between Western classical and carnatic music. So we mutually came up with ideas and those ideas came together as the piece we played in Rome.

What kind of music does 'Shakthi 2' incorporate? How did you put it together?

Shakthi is mainly fusion. It includes pieces composed by all four of us. Since it is different from playing keertanams and so on, we rehearsed together for a week. I composed a piece called 'Maya' just for this group. We also invite different guest artistes to perform with us. We also change the content of our programmes. If we are on tour, we meet a few days before at some place to rehearse. I consider it a honor to have had the opportunity to play with John McCoughlin, the world's fastest guitarist.

My co-artistes, Zakhir Hussain and Selva Ganesh are also very talented and I am privileged to play with them.

When was the first time you ventured beyond the boundaries of Carnatic classical music and began experimenting with other styles of music?

In 1992 I performed at the Barcelona Olympics. I was the only Indian artiste to perform at the inaugural function. During that tour, I had the opportunity to visit London.

I was doing a classical album for the Real Music Company. It was produced by Michael Brook. During the recording, Nigel Kennedy, very famous musician came there and said that he wanted to do an album with me. We decided to do work together the very next day.

I played without disturbing our traditional style in a fusion album with Michael Brook. That was a very big hit that made me popular in USA and UK. In fact some of that tracks have also been used in the film 'Golden Eye'.