Neyveli B Venkatesh

Carnatic Percussion Mridangam

Neyveli B Venkatesh

2 minute read

Neyveli B Venkatesh is a Chennai-based mridangam player. His rhythm training began under his father AS Balaramanan, and continued under PP Venkatesan and MN Kandaswamy Pillai. His promising career has already featured top accompaniment slots and numerous collaborations, and he is renowned for superb solo performances.

Neyveli Venkatesh has been a prominent presence at Darbar Festival, performing in 2007, 2008, and 2010. Showcasing his mastery of the mridangam, he has accompanied esteemed artists such as Mysore A Chandan, Jyotsna Srikanth, and Sanjay Subrahmanyan. His intricate rhythms and deep understanding of Carnatic percussion have enriched each performance, leaving audiences captivated by his dynamic and expressive playing.

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Patri Satish Kumar, Amrit Nataraj, & Triplicane Sekhar | Dons of Percussion

Recorded at Darbar Festival 2017, on 9th November, at London’s Sadler’s Wells. Musicians: - Patri Satish Kumar (mridangam) - Tavil Triplicane Sekhar (thavil) - Amrit Nataraj (kanjira) Three superb exponents of Carnatic rhythm trade off and join forces - Patri Satish Kumar (mridangam), Tavil Triplicane Sekhar (thavil), and Amrit Nataraj (kanjira). Learn more about the music: Patri Satish Kumar is one of India’s leading mridangam players, known for fine dynamic control and architectural solo phrasings. First inducted into music by his violinist mother, who noticed his talent at tapping his school lunchbox in rhythm, he went on to study under three Andhra Pradesh gurus - S Ramachandramurthy, VA Swami and V Narasimham. He credits his teachers with broadening his mind, recounting that they never set him ambitious goals beyond immersing into the music as fully as he could. He says that “the mridangam chose me and not the other way around”. But it was on kanjira that he got his early break, reasoning that it would allow him to accompany top mridangam artists and perhaps fill in for them on occasion. It worked - he was soon accepted as a mridangam accompanist, and has now worked with almost all of today’s top Carnatic artists. He has worked in jazz settings too, and his ‘Dancing Drums’ project involves a large ensemble of layered percussion instruments. But his forays into fusion have not diluted his classical playing, which still forms the focal point of his stellar career. Subscribe to the Darbar Player to access the full, uncut performance