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A. Kanyakumari, an outstanding and versatile violinist, will get the Sangita Kalanidhi award of the Music Academy this year. “The executive committee of the Academy has unanimously chosen her for its coveted award,” said N. Murali, president of Academy.

He added that Ms. Kanyakumari was the first woman violinist to get the award in the history of the Music Academy and she will preside over the 90th annual conference of the Academy to be held between December 15, 2016 and January 1, 2017. The award will be conferred on her at the Sadas on January 1, 2017.

“It is God's grace that I have been selected for the award at an appropriate time. I am very happy because it is considered as the highest award in the field of carnatic music,” Ms. Kanyakumari, a student of late M.L. Vasanthakumari.

A native of Vijayanagaram in Andhra Pradesh, Ms. Kanyakumari had her initial training under Ivaturi Vijayeswara Rao. Later she learnt from noted violinist M. Chandrasekaran, another Sangita Kalanidhi awardee. In 1971 she became a student of MLV. “I was with her for 19 years learning and accompanying her,” said Ms. Kanyakumari.

She is yet another student of the G.N. Balasubramaniam (GNB) — MLV school of music to win the award. Others who had already received the award are vocalists Sudha Ragunathan and Tiruchur V. Ramachandran. A composer, who constantly experimented with music, she created seven ragas under the title Saptadri , seven names of Lord Venkateswara of Tirupati. “I used Annamacharya’s compositions to give expression to the seven ragas,” said Ms. Kanyakumari.

Her other raga creations include Mahalakshmi, Tirumurti and Bharat, a raga created on the occasion of the golden jubilee celebrations of Independence. “I have teamed up with nagaswaram and veena players and my Vadhyalahiri was popular in the late 1980s,” said Ms. Kanyakumari, who had accompanied saxophone player Kadri Gopalnath along with thavil player Haridwaramangalam A.K. Palanivel and tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. She teaches a lot of students in India and abroad, but does not accept money from them.

Mr. Murali said the Sangita Kala Acharya awards will go to Rudrapatnam brothers — R.N. Thyagarajan and R.N. Tharanathan and K. Venkataramanan, vocalist and music teacher. TTK awards will be conferred on vocalist Nirmala Sundararajan and Thevaram singer M. Kodilingam. Musicologist award will go to Rama Kausalya and Pappa Venkatramaiah award to violinist Sikkil Baskaran. The Nataya Kala Acharaya award will be conferred on Malavika Sarukkai on January 3, 2017, at the inauguration of dance festival.