Anuradha Sriram

Early life

Anuradha was born in Chennai to playback singer Renuka Devi and Meenakshi Sundaram Mohan. She did her schooling (I and II standards) in Coimbatore at the St. Francis Matriculation School, and later at the Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan, Chennai. She has a B.A and M.A in music from Madras University and secured the university gold medal in both the courses. She was given a fellowship to do her Master of Arts degree in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, Connecticut.

She was trained by many esteemed gurus like Thanjavur S. Kalyanaraman, Sangeetha Kalanidhi T. Brinda and T. Viswanathan in Carnatic music and has had intensive training under Pandit Mannikbua Thakurdas for Hindustani classical music. She is also an accomplished Western Classical opera singer, having undergone intensive training from Prof. Shirley Meier in New York, U.S.A.

While in Wesleyan, apart from learning and performing western opera and jazz, she also performed in many Indonesian and West African music concerts. Her M.A project work titled "Ilayaraja: Composer as a phenomenon in Tamil Film Culture" has been widely acclaimed and is being published in the Garland World Music Encyclopaedia.

Career

Anuradha has performed extensively all over India and U.S.A and has given many radio and TV programmes since the age of 12. Anuradha Sriram first entered the Tamil Cinema Industry as a child artist in the 1980 Tamil movie Kaali. In 1995, she was introduced as a singer by A R Rahman for the song "Malarodu Malaringu" in the movie Bombay. Her first solo was for A R Rahman in Indira.

She specialises in Carnatic music and has sung in over 1000 concerts worldwide.

Anuradha has several chart topping Devotional albums to her credit and she regales audiences all over south India with her Devotional concerts too. She also collaborates with her husband Sriram Parasuram on their very successful Classical Music Jugalbandhi concerts and their hit TV programme “Elaame Sangeetham Thaan”. She has also anchored many hit music programmes on TV.

Having sung more than 3000 film songs in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, and six north Indian languages, some of her hits are "Nalam Nalam Ariyaaval" (Kaadal Kotai), "Dilruba Dilruba" (Priyam), "Meenamma" (Aasai), "Acham Acham Illai" (Indira), "Phenk Hawa" (Ram Jaane) and "Pehli Pehli" (Zor).

She has composed the music for the movie Five Star along with her husband Sriram.

Awards and recognition

Albums

Personal life

Anuradha Sriram is married to singer Sriram Parasuram (whom she met at Wesleyan University). They have two sons named Jayant and Lokesh.