Nagai Muralidharan

Nagai R.Muralidharan is one of the foremost violinist in the field of Indian Carnatic Music.He was born on 4th December 1958 into a musical family to Sri R.Rajagopalan and Smt R.Komalavalli. Seeing his interest in music at an early age of 5, his mother started to teach Vocal and Violin to him. With the rigourous practice he soon became very familiar with the instrument and started playing concerts with his mother. His maiden performance was at the age of 10. He had his further advance training in violin under Senior Violin Vidwan Sri R.S.Goplalakrishnan. In the year 1973 he won the first prize in the ALL INDIA MUSIC COMPETION conducted by ALL INDIA RADIO. Nagai Muralidharan also received the first prize in Violin in the music competitions organised by The Madras Music Academy, Tamil Isai Sangam and The Indian Fine Arts society, chennai. In the year 1974 , he received the prize won in the The Indian Fine Arts society, chennai from Bharat Ratna Smt.M.S.Subhalakshmi. His career as a violinist has spanned for over 60 years. Today, he is a top-ranking violinist, noted for his clarity, rich tonal quality,crispness, Laya knowledge and has developed a distinct scholarly style of his own. He is also a regular feature as a solo violinist and as an accompanist in the Radio Sangeetha Sammelan concerts on Doordharshan and in several CDs and cassettes. Additionally, he also served as a Top Ranking violin artiste in All India Radio, Trichy from 1978 to 2004 completing 26 years of Government service before his voluntary retirement.. Nagai Muralidharan is most sought after violinist by all the leading lights of carnatic music through out his career right fom his early days. He has accompanied many legends and young artists in their vocal and instrumental concerts including Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Alathur Srinivasa Iyer, M.D.Ramanathan, Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna, Voleti Venkateswarulu, Nedunoori Krishnamurthy, R.K.Srikantan, Maharajapuram V.Santhanam, Madurai Somasundaram,Palghat K.V.Narayanaswamy, Sandhyavandhanam Srinivasa Rao, T.M.Thyagarajan, D.K.Jayaraman, T.K.Govinda rao, B.V.Raman, B.V. Lakshmanan, T.R.Subramaniam, Dr.S.Ramanathan, S.Rajam, Tanjore Sankara Iyer, B.Rajam Iyer, P.S.Narayanaswamy, Tanjore S.Kalyanaraman , Palghat C.S.Krishna Iyer , Seerkazhi Govindarajan, Chidambaram C.S.Jayaraman ,K.J.Yesudas, T.V.Gopalakrishnan, Trichur V.Ramachandran, T.V.Sankaranarayanan, Madurai T.N. Seshagopalan , Prabhakara Varma, Neiyanttankara Vasudevan , O.S.Thyagarajan, Hyderabad Brothers, Rudhrapatnam Brothers, Neyveli Santhanagopalan, Maharajapuram Ramachandran, Maharajapuram Srinivasan, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Papanasam Ashok Ramani, Unnikrishnan, T.M.Krishna, Malladi Brothers, Carnatica Brothers, Sikkil Gurucharan. Instrumentalist’s Including S.Balachandar (Veena), M.Balamuralikrishna (Viola), T.R.Mahalingam (Flute), Dr. N.Ramani (Flute), Namagiripetai Krishnan (Nadaswaram), A.K.C Natrajan (Clarinet), Kadri Gopalnath (Saxaphone), N.Ravikiran (Chitraveena). In his Solo concerts many senior percussion artistes accompanied him including Dr.T.K.Murthy,Vellore Ramabadran ,Umayalpuram K.Sivaraman ,Trichy Sankaran, Guruvayur Dorai , Tanjore Upendran , Karaikudi R.Mani, Mannargudi Easwaran , Srimushnam Raja Rao, Thiruvarur Bakthavatsalam ,K.V. Prasad, Trichy B.Harikumar, Neyveli Venkatesh,Patri Sathishkumar,T.H.Vikku Vinayaka ram, E.M.Subramaniam ,T.V.Vasan Thirupanithura Radhakrishnan, Coimbatore Mohanram, V.Suresh , Vaikom Gopalakrishnan , Pudukkotai Mahadeva Iyer and many others. In the year 1985 , he has performed 26 hours non-stop Marathon Violin Concert held at SRI RANGAM TEMPLE at Tamilnadu. Nagai Muralidharan has accompanied Sri K.J.Yesudas in Dubai on the event of 50th Indian Independence day celebration in 1997. Nagai Muralidharan is an integral part of the Sustaining Sampradaya, a educational series conducted by Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival,United States of America,to promote and cultivate the rich traditional Indian Classical Music by teaching people through online and offline. He has many students in both Violin and Vocal in India and abroad who are now very promising in Carnatic Music Field. Nagai Muralidharan is also the recipient of numerous awards and laurels, a few of which including  KALAIMAMANI - STATE GOVERNMENT OF TAMILNADU - 2003  SANGEET NATAK ACADEMY Award - GOVT OF INDIA -2010  SANGEETHA RATHNAKARA - Bhairavi Fine Arts,Cleveland Ohio,USA -2015