Performing Career
KVN's major break came at a Madras Music Academy concert in 1954, when he was unexpectedly forced to substitute his Guru, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar who was not in a position to attend the conference under unforeseen circumstances. Accompanied by doyens Palghat Mani Iyer and Papa Venkataramayya, this concert proved to be a milestone in Narayanaswamy's career. The training under Palghat Mani Iyer allowed KVN to develop a solid knowledge of rhythmic nuances. This in turn would enable him to be at ease in the company of such legends of percussion as Palani Subramaniam Pillai, Palghat R. Raghu, Mavelikkara Velukkutty Nair, and Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman to name a few. KVN, Palghat R. Raghu and violin maestro T.N.Krishnan would soon become a frequent and much admired combination on stage.
K.V.Narayanaswamy was intimately connected to the Travancore Royal Family following his skillful rendition of Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma's Navaratri compositions. Another landmark in KVN's life came in 1964 when he participated in the East-West Encounter concerts in New Delhi. This was followed by a widely acclaimed concert at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in 1965.
On being made professor of music at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, between 1965–67, he went on a coast-to-coast concert tour of USA. He was one of four artists including Bismillah Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, and Ravi Shankar who participated in the hugely popular Hollywood Bowl music festival in Los Angeles in the summer of 1967.In 1974, KVN went to teach in Berkeley, California for a year, in the company of dancer Balasaraswati and sitarist Nikhil Banerjee. Invited by the American Society of Eastern Arts, he traveled to North America, Europe (Berlin Music Festival in 1976) and Australia (Adelaide Arts Festival in 1988) multiple times thereafter on various concert tours. He also joined the Music College in Madras as a lecturer in 1962 when Musiri Subramania Iyer was its principal, and retired as Professor of Music in 1982.In 1984, Narayanaswamy was to become the first Indian musician to be awarded the Fulbright Scholarship and went to San Diego State University in California as an artist-in-residence under the scholarship. For nine months he taught at the university and gave performances all over North America.
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