Male Vocalists

I am Ravi Gudipati, have been a music lover since childhood, voracious passion for singing, versatile, melodious rendering in voice, very expressive and a great talent of presenting the shows professionally. I live in bay area, CA started a group like SRUTHI in 2001 and gave performances locally. I did lot of charity shows and fund raising events like Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF), Bay area Telugu association (BATA) and Silicon Andhra. I performed in TANA 1997 in Los Angeles and TANA 2003 in bay area, CA. I released an audio devotional album in Andhra Pradesh which was a huge success. I was accompanied with Smt.Vanijayaram and S.P.Sailaja for this album. I got an opportunity to sing with a great music director Koti when we performed a show for NY/NJ people. I did sing with playback singers like Mano, Vijayalakshmi and Usha for major performances. I gave lot of shows for BATA,TANA, TASC (San Diego and Los Angeles),TLCA (NY/NJ),Silicon Andhra (bay area, CA) and many more. I sing all old and new Telugu/Hindi movie songs.

Prasad Durvasula started singing since his childhood, and has won numerous awards / prizes in college and University competitions. Three times Ligt Music Competetion winner at Delaware Telugu Assn, USA. In the past sang in the presence of Late. Pitapuram Nageswar Rao, G. Anand, SPB, V. Rama Krishna, P. Suseela, Usha, K.V.Mahadevan , Dr. Rama Naidu, Satyam & Kodanda Pani. He knows he has to learn a lot if age permits.

I am Murali Krishna Sambara. Music is in my family and I have been singing since my childhood. It all started with the song "Telugu Veera Levara" at age 5, with my voice substituting the accompanyments as well. I later performed as a child/matured stage artist and won many prizes at district/state level singing competitions. I have also been a lead singer in college orchestra and performed in many inter collegate events. Thanks to my mom's encouragement, I am trained in carnatic music (7 years)& mridangam (4 years) which laid a solid foundation. To me, good singing is about Sur/Shruti, rhythm & clarity in rendering the song. Brought up in Hyderabad, I sing both Hindi & Telugu film songs.

Anand Kannan - First stage performance ever (in front of a huge audience ...over 500 students & teachers) was with a band we formed in college in 1998 and my first song being AR Rehman's Vande mataram. It feels great to have started off a journey with this great number from the maestro. Although I had sung on smaller stages before, this was the most memorable one. After graduation from college, I also graduated to being a lead vocalist of a hard rock band. Our favorite covers included tracks by Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Megadeth and so on to mention a few. 4 years later that is in 2004, I became a part of the most popular and happening band in Hyderabad called Alter Egoz. We did some top notch gigs and were known for our versatility, attitude and elegance. We also have the OST of Hyderabad Blues II to our credit. (The song goes like Hitec vitec baingan ku bolo... Music and lyrics were composed by us and sung by me of course. It still remains a favorite among people I know.) I have won the best vocalist award quite many times during 2000-07. Won the best vocalist in an inter-corporate western singing contest that held in Chennai as well. I have done a few jingles and also sung a song for a Telugu movie but sadly before I could complete that project I landed here in US and I wasn't available for further recordings. I don't even know if that movie got released :( I came to the US in June 2007 and surprisingly I have been singing more Hindi songs than I ever did in India and singing English came to an abrupt stop. After that SaReGaMaPa happened in my life and I got through to the top 20 finalists who were to shoot in Dallas. The experience was quite awesome. SaReGaMaPa is a huge name in India and this was the first time they made this happen in such large scale in the US. I was eliminated just before the last round and the mega finals following that. Given another chance I would do a lot lot better but it was quite an amazing learning experience. Without a second thought I started learning Hindustani classical from Mahesh Kale after my return from Dallas. It's been over 6 months now and I see myself doing harder songs relatively easier. The learning never stops so the improvement process is still on. I also sing for bands called Antariksh and BandITs here.

KeyBoard

Rajkumar Venkat is a self-learned keyboardist with a keen ear for light music. He picked up playing the keyboard during his undergrad days and went on to become the lead keyboardist for the college music band "TekMusik", winning several inter-college music competitions during that time. His career then led him into the Silicon Valley and has since been very active in the Bay Area light music scene. Language is certainly not a barrier as he has performed with a variety of bands like "Raagalaya", "Bandits", "Eastern Winds", "Prithvi", "Surabhee" and "Induz" to name a few. Further to live performances, Raj has tried his hand at composing and has composed a couple of songs for one of the recent NRI Bollywood movies. He also had the great opportunity of contributing to a multi-lingual devotional album sung by kids for Chinmaya Misison. Raj is a software architect by profession and gets ample support and encouragement from his wife, Shuba, a violinist herself, on all his musical endeavors.

Drums

"Music to me, in any form, has been (and will be) always an undying passion. I have been an active participant/proponent of this facet of Arts right from my school days! As a senior executive of the music club at BIT, Ranchi, I have had the fortune of conducting many programmes. As part of the Inter-college competitions, I had earned the first prize for both the composition and rendition of ghazal amongst 25 partcipants with a challenge to compose within a time slot of an hour!. Though I would consider percussion as my forte (which includes the drums, conga, tabla, mridangam to quote a prominent few), I also dabble with different instruments like the keyboard and the guitar to explore and utilize the palette of possibilities that these instruments offer to enrich a composition. Composing is where I feel I can put my best creative side of this venerable art, and I have been able to contribute my mite to different organizations (dramatics and cultural) within the Bay Area in terms of my work. I would like to continue exploiting my God given talents in the arena of composition, be it a blissful bhajan, captivating couplets of a ghazal, intriguing instrumentals, or lilting light music. I have worked with different music groups in the Bay Area, chief among them being Surabhee and Pallavi. Currently, I am a freelancer, who would like to participate in this field with similar passionate people!"

Tabla

Ravi Gutalais originally from Hyderabad, India and has been initiated at a very early age into Tabla by Shri P.Anjaiah, a senior staff artiste at AIR, Hyderabad, India. Currently he resides in San Jose, California and has been studying Tabla under Maestro Swapan Chaudhuri at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, CA for the past 18 years. He also has been teaching Tabla to a number of aspiring students in the Bay Area. Ravi has won numerous awards and is a recipient of All India National Talent Search Scholarship. He had been a regular performer at AIR, Hyderabad, India between 1982-1986. He has accompanied many noted artistes such as, Pt. Jasraj, Smt. Lakshmi Shankar, Dr.L.Subramaniam, Pt.Budhaditya Mukherjee, Ustad Shujaat Khan, Master Shashank, etc. Ravi has 7 CD recordings and 2 cassette recordings to his credit. Ravi designs semiconductor memory chips for a living.