Fellowship for Nirmala Rajasekar

Nirmala Rajasekar, Carnatic music vocalist and veena player based outside of Minneapolis, MN, USA, has been awarded the prestigious Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship for traditional and folk arts for the period 2006-2007. Applications for Bush Fellowships in any discipline are extremely competitive, and Nirmala is the first Indian musician to be awarded this honor. The two-year fellowship provides Nirmala the artistic, business and financial support required to fulfill her fellowship plan.

Nirmala says she has an ambitious plan to utilise her fellowship period to focus on developing her repertoire of rare Muthuswamy Dikshitar compositions with her gurus T. R. Subramanyam and Kalpakam Swaminathan, develop her knowledge of Sanskrit, and to document the guru-sishya parampara during her learning process.

In the summer 2006, Nirmala will be performing in Bali, Indonesia on July 1 and July 3 in the international premiere of the unique cross-cultural collaboration “Sethu”, as the composer and lead vocalist. Nirmala will follow from July 5-17 with several performances in Chennai and Bangalore, India, including a concert under the auspices of Radel Electronics at Ananya Sabhangana in Bangalore on July 15th.