Early Years
Prasanna began learning guitar when he was ten years old and studied with Dr C.G.Shanmugaraj Phd(Raj Echo Orchestra) and then Samuel Thangadurai. After learning quite a few things on his own, in 1984, he started formal instruction with Tiruvarur Balasubramaniam. In 1989, he gave his first professional Carnatic music concert at the Madras Music Academy. He studied with violinist A. Kanyakumari. Around this time, he performed several concerts in the sabhas in Chennai.
Today Prasanna is seen as a pioneer in performing Carnatic (south Indian classical) music on the guitar as well as an accomplished performer/composer in jazz and film music. As a composer, Prasanna also scored the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary Smile Pinki, as well as several scores for feature films and contemporary dance theater, and he orchestrated A.R. Rahman’s title score for the Oscar-nominated film Lagaan.
After studying engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Prasanna earned an honors degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston. Prasanna is the founder President of Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music, India's first professional college for contemporary music.He is part of "Tirtha" project with pianist Vijay Iyer.
Read more about this topic: R. Prasanna
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