About Us
Mahesh Mudigonda hails from a musical and artistic family and he had formal training in Mridangam from Sri. Chavali Hanumath Sastri garu (Vidwan in both carnatic vocal and mridangam) of Vijayawada and advanced training from Mridangam/Ghatam Vidwan Sri. S.V.Ramani. Mahesh also ventured into the notes of music and experimented with Violin and keyboard. Today he plays keyboard for light music and mridangam for the carnatic setting. Using his knowledge of mridangam, vocal, violin, keyboards and computers, Mahesh composes original music for TV programs and documentaries - sometimes very classical and other times contemporary and often everywhere in between.
Malavi Mudigonda comes from a musical family, and picked up vocal and veena in the lap of her mother Guru Nada Sudha Smt. Sakuntala Chunduru. She learnt and taught at the music college that her mother started more than 25 years ago - Gayatri Sangeeta Kalasala in Bapatla and now in Hyderabad. She is gifted with a very flexible voice with a range of 3 octaves. She holds a 6 year diploma in Carnatic music from the Government of AP.
Shashi Srinivasan is blessed to be born into a family of artists in Chennai. His mother is a karnatic vocalist and a veena player. His father is an actor and writer. Shashi is classically trained to play the Mridangam, and regularly accompanies both local and artists from India for karnatic performances. He also picked up several other Indian and Western percussion instruments. Apart from his interest in music, he sketches and paints when time permits. He likes to listen to wide variety of music and also composed a few albums. He also believes that it is a special gift and privilege to bring happiness through music to an audience.
eSwara Creations - Today
eSwara creations today has features contributions from the above and
Tejasvi Chakravarthy (Portland, OR) - Flute
Ashwin Krishnakumar(Bay Area, CA) - Flute
Kishan Patel (Vancouver, WA) - Tabla
Ganesh krovvidi (Hyderabad) - Vocals
Chandrasekhar Vaddlamannati - Vocals
and a growing list of artistes.
Jay Swaminathan(New York, NY) and Rajinikanth Gandikota (Bangalore, India) are great critics and provides invaluable honest feedback.
eSwara creations (History) really started the leg work back when Mahesh was in IIT time, but became stageworthy when Mahesh came to IISc between 1991 and 1993 - in the team called Melange performing mixed and varied music - with Champion D(the band master, sax and bass), Nivedita Ram(piano/keys), Lalitha (piano), Santosh (Drums), Partha (flute), Praboo/Kamat (Guitars) and singers (Raji/Shalini etc), Patki (Tabla), Nagaraj (violin), Vaidyanathan (Mridangam). Apologies to a few others who I didn't mention- because their names dont readily pop up in my head. Then a bunch of friends I made thru music - Yerchuru Srinivasa Kumar (collector of vocal renditions of hundreds of Tyagaraja compositions), Shashidhara (connosieur of Hindustani music and nuances), Aruna Turaga (contributes cultural content on the web to places such as Surasa.net and Shivakumar's site). I know Shivakumar himself as a next door neighbor in Hyderabad and also as a junior at IIT Madras. Here is his Treasure of Carnatic music.
Post IISc - a couple of MIDI-fied computer creations happened in Mysore in collaboration with Chengappa CB (call him sa ni sa or C B C ) - an incurable punster. And then in the US a bunch of compositions thru eSwara the band in Seattle WA, and now thru the Portland OR based band called Tarana.
eSwara Seattle Band- It all started in 1999 - when a new team called Dundubhi started performing for Telugu Association in Seattle Area. Pranav Kandula, Mahesh Mudigonda and Malavi Mudigonda, Lakshmi and Murty Gorti, Madhu Gadepalli, Gopal Alamuri, Bala Mamillapalli were the core members. Renamed to eSwara - this team performed regularly, year after year, for Ugadi and Deepavali till 2003. Starting 2004 this team performs yearly telugu light music shows to benefit the Sankara Eye Foundation. Thanks a bunch to Pranav for alerting me when this domain name became available.
Mah-e-Swara!