Hindustani Composer's Night

Giri Samkeerthana Sangamam

Dear friends,

The SIFAS Alumni was officially launched on 13 September 2008 with the election of our first group of office bearers. Over these past 5 years, we have taken great efforts to provide a platform that would enable our members to interact with and learn from one another. It has therefore been our pleasure to observe as our senior and junior members work alongside one another to organise and conduct Alumni events.

The Alumni and its members are regularly involved in organising and performing at SIFAS events such as the annual Academy Day celebrations, SIFAS Music and Dance Festival and Navarathiri. Further to this, we have also been involved in two major Dance productions at the Esplanade; Saptha Sthuthi in March 2010 and Krishna Bharatham in April 2012.

Connecting with you

Details of our past events, including photographs are available on our Facebook Group page and on our Blogsite at www.sifaslalumni.blogspot.com.

Our Next Production

The present Alumni Committee is now eager to launch our Music Wing on a public platform  through an Orchestra based Production entitled Giri Samkeerthana Sangamam ("GSS"). 

This landmark event in our Alumni Calendar is scheduled to take place with the support of the SIFAS management, on 20 April 2013, Saturday at the University Culture Centre between 7 and 9 pm. 

The original compositions for the production have been created by our SIFAS tutors and the performers are a group of of past and existing SIFAS students who are now members of the SIFAS Alumni. Further details on the performers, the composers and the key persons behind this production are available on our Production Website (link). 

SIFAS Academy Day 2012

Dear SIFAS FAMILY,

Our Annual Graduation Ceremony - Academy Day 2012

Kindly RSVP to manoj@sifas.org or maha@sifas.org for entry passes.....AS THE CELEBRATION CLOSES IN!

Best Regards,
SIFAS Alumni 

Moving Forward

FORMATION OF SIFAS ALUMNI MUSIC WING 

When the SIFAS Alumni was first formed more than 3 yrs ago, there was never a music wing. I was not involved in the previous SIFAS Alumni committees. Despite being an ex-SIFAS student myself, I was not very involved in SIFAS programs after my guru left SIFAS. For the past 10 years, I have been a member of the People’s Association Singapore Indian Orchestra and Choir. 

At the beginning of last year (2011), I met our current President, Ms Gomathi who urged me to join the SIFAS Alumni. After our chat, I decided to join the Alumni and signed up. My decision to join was also motivated by the fact that my musical path in SIOC was heading in a direction which was very different to what I expected for myself. I also wanted to do something for the younger generation and promote Indian classical music. 

The younger generation learns about classical music but does not stay beyond a certain time or after graduation. The reason they cite for their early retirement is their studies and hectic lifestyle of Singapore. I wanted to change all of this. Together with me, Sai Akilesh and Sai Vignesh both joined the SIFAS Alumni. 

During last year's SIFAS Alumni committee elections, I ran for the post of Music IC. Once elected, I brought in Akilesh and Vignesh to help build my sub-committee. 

Our task was to form a SIFAS Alumni Orchestra. Our Senior Alumni, Rajandra became our Orchestra conductor. We also consulted Mr Radha Vijayan for advice during this process. Our main obstacle was to in recruiting members. Most of the older Alumni did not want to join or were not interested to come back to SIFAS. We went around asking most people but to no avail. There were only about 5 musicians able to commit to the orchestra. During one of the meetings, another Senior Alumni, Mrs Nirmala told us to start of with we have instead of waiting. By seeing us start, others would join us. That really pushed us forward. 

We started practices with our small number of musicians. Our group was small but we had fun in the process. Slowly a few others joined us. We had our first performance during the 2011 SIFAS Academy day. It went very well and people became keen to know more about this small group of us. From there we slow had graduating SIFAS students to join us. Numbers eventually did grow. We continued with our weekly Sunday practices. A proper structure was starting to fall into place. 

Our latest performance was held during the SIFAS Music and Dance Festival 2012. We had very good reviews about the orchestra. As I was confident that we were capable of performing on a bigger platform, I decided together with my team that we should commence with efforts toward our first major production. We currently have about 20 members and we are hopeful that the strength will be increased to 30 members by the end of 2012. This will give us some performance strength for our production. It makes me very happy to see the Alumni music wing reach to this standard within a year. My team and I will strive to materialise this dream of a major production and create an awareness of classical music to the younger generation. This is my passion and dream. 

Moving Forward…..



By: Thulasidas (Music In Charge of SIFAS ALUMNI)

Review: The Orchestra by the Alumni

What a pleasant surprise to view the impressions and expressions from our "debut" performance. 

Shrimathi Bhushany Kalyanaraman is a senior Artiste from Chennai and was the Guest of Honour at our performance. Ranjani is one of us and was our vice-president in the first ever Alumni Committee.

THE SIFAS ALUMNI Orchestra

For those of you who missed the Alumni Orchestra's first public performance on the morning of 1 April 2012, it was indeed a PROUD moment as exclaimed by our Advisor Dr Kasinathan. 

Our senior alumni came to guide us and lead the way to creating a vision that seemed impossible just a year before; the idea of having an orchestra consisting of the alumni of SIFAS. Discipline was key to this venture.

Our music IC who kept his cool when moments seemed impossible!!

Our pillar of support who tirelessly believed in us

From days of regular and intense practice

to sheer joy and relief

Coming together as friends

Brimming with Pride

Working with old friends

 Roping in the old gang even when they prefer to help from behind the scenes

Having fun in the process

While working with the next generation

Discovering and exposing the hidden talents from among us

Managing our commitments and nurturing our passion

Inspiring the creative potential of our next generation

A constant and unconditional presence to remind and assure us of the support and reliance 

between our dance and music wings

Our dancers on whom we rely 

A reminder that there is always time if there is a willingness

You may have left your music and dance a long time ago. But a part of you remains curious. 

If we can, You can. Time and Commitment is not easy but it's possible.

We are proof of this.

Meanwhile we await the face of the next generation of ALUMNI

Chennai for the Season

According to the Lonely Planet (also known as The Guidebook for people who want to go somewhere but cannot), Chennai is not a tourists' paradise. According to the author, you would

...be pretty hard pressed to find much to gush about when it comes to Chennai. The streets are clogged with traffic, the weather oppressively hot, the air heavy with smog, and sights of any interest are uncooperatively thin on the ground. Even the movie stars, as one Chennaiite put it, are 'not that hot'.

Quoted from the Lonely Planet's Chennai page. Check it out!

Yep, as Anita says, Chennai is the "Detroit of India", with a secret so big that it's all over Chennai and nowhere to be seen at the same time. The Lonely Planet is not in on it!

The December Season, as we call it, overflowing with (some say too many) concerts and events and lecture-demonstrations throughout the month of December, is an amazing thing. Hundreds of concerts over the span of a month. Music is in the air. Nobody would look twice if a random, otherwise normal-looking person were to contort his or her hands and face in public (singing an imaginary RTP, or re-enacting some of the more "physical" singers' mannerisms).

Everywhere, you can see traces of it, from inter-Sabha buses to traditional clothes, to Kutcheri crawls (!), to Sabha canteen ratings; I've heard the Narada Gana Sabha is famous for other reasons than music alone. The Singaporean in me is looking forward to the food as well! It is almost a hidden festival; while the rest of Chennai goes on with its business, there is a festival going on that may well be more famous outside India than within. There are websites detailing everything about concerts from locations to artists, like kutcheris.com! They've even listed the SIFAS week-long programme in Chennai in detail, including things like information on the performers (Yes. I admit that I searched for my own name and found my concert listing! Talk about pressure!).

Seeing things like the kutcheris website and being a part of Sifas' second-ever foray into the Chennai music scene in December is a reminder that there is a world of music out there, bigger and livelier and also much more intimidating than the place we've come to call our artistic home. Every day, there are at least three dozen concerts going on: of those on the way to stardom, those who've made it, those who perform for lofty reasons, those who perform for those who listen, and anyone else who can shimmy their way (by hook or other means) into a slot at any sabha. You will miss more concerts than you can hope to attend.

Personally, it has been a gradual process, from finalising my concert list, learning and rehearsing what I have to perform, to getting everything pieced together, to overcoming minor illnesses along the way to concert readiness. The Sifas March festival is no less important an event to me than this December season, but for one aspect. Learning from masters and virtuoso performers, seeing so many of them in action in such a short, focused span of time really stretches your knowledge in a way that no Sangeethapriya/Youtube-spamming can ever match. Rare books, audio recordings, compositions and such are much more easily accessed there. The internet helps, no doubt, but it cannot replace the actual (some would say visceral) experience of art. Great art always leaves one in awe, with a gap in your mind where comprehension and knowing used to be. Many performers will be in pursuit of that awe, that gap in mind-space.

And now, me and my fellow students and alumni of SIFAS who are performing in Chennai have joined the ranks of participants, from being mere rasikas. There are youth slots in sabhas like the Music Academy, and you do get an idea of where you stand, in a global sense. We are small fish, swimming in an ocean of music. Awe is appropriate.

Alumni Sub Committees

Dear Alumni,

You will be pleased to know that further to the election of the Alumni Committee, we are also forming sub- committees for these following groups:

Music
Dance
Publicity
Logistics (under the Events manager); and
Communications/Editorial (under the Editor).

These sub-committees are created in anticipation of productions lined up for the next year. Each IC on the Committee will act as a representative of these sub-committee and liase between the Committee and the respective sub-committees. We invite all members to volunteer for those sub-committees of their interest. This is on an entirely voluntary basis and you would be working closely with the Committee and members.

Update: The Music Sub-Committee is almost formed and we intend to have three music-chairs on the music sub-committee, for vocal, instruments and percussion.

We are proud to present our three music chairs:

Mrs Premalatha Naidu will be our Music-Chair (Vocal);
Mr V Rajandra will be our Music-Chair (Instruments); and
Mr Thulasi Das will be our Music-Chair (Percussion).

We thank them in advance and look forward to working together under their guidance.

Please drop us an email at sifasalumni@gmail.com to let us know if you would also like to be more directly involved in the planning of music events for the Alumni.

Do watch this space for more information on the other sub-committees. The Dance and Editorial sub-committees are also a work in progress at the moment and looking for volunteers. Do contact us if these are your areas of interest and you believe you can contribute your time and ideas.

yours faithfully,

the SIFAS ALUMNI Committee