THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The capital city’s first festival in 2018 gifts music to your ears - literally. The Kuthiramalika Palace at East Fort will host the ten-day Swathi Sangeetolsavam from January 4, Thursday, to January 13. This year’s edition features some of the best-loved names in classical music. The festival - which pays tributes to Swathi Thirunal - will open on Thursday with a performance by Palghat Ramaprasad.
At the three-hour performance, he will be accompanied by Avaneeswaram S R Vinu on the violin, G Babu on the mridangam and Perukavu P L Sudheer on the ghatam. Manda Sudharani and Manda Sruthi Ravali will perform on Friday, January 5 and Tamarakkad Govindan Namboodiri on Saturday. Sunday and Monday will feature performances by Aswathi Thirunal Rama Varma and Amrutha Venkatesh respectively.
Flautist Amith Nadig of Bengaluru will perform on Monday, accompanied on the violin by S R Mahadev Sarma, on the mridangam by Nanjil Arul, on the ghatam by Manjoor Unnikrishnan, Bangalore Rajasekhar (morsing) and Somasekhar Jois (Konnakol). The remaining days of the festival will feature performances by G Baby Sreeram, Bangalore Brothers S Ashok and M B Hariharan, T V Gopalakrishnan and Sanjay Subramanyan. On all days, the programme will begin at 6 pm and end at 9 pm.