The Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival is the largest Indian classical music festival outside of India. It was first celebrated in 1978 and has now grown to be a 12-day festival with more than 10,000 attendees with 5,000 appearing for the opening weekend. The year 2025 is the Festival's 45th year.

Schedule:

8:00am - 9:00am: Flute Ensemble
Students of J.A. Jayanth

9:30am - 10:30am: Jewels of Rhythm - A Grand Music & Percussion Ensemble
Presented by T.S. Nandakumar of NJ
and his students from TSN's School of NJ
with violin, flute, veena, mridangam, tavil, kanjira, ghatam, morsing, and drums

11:00am - 12:15pm: Keyboard Ensemble
Acharya Rathnakara M.S. Martin and his disciples
Punnur Arvind Kaushik (mridangam)
N. Sundar (tabla)

12:45pm - 1:45pm: A group presentation by Sruti Laya Fine Arts Academy
Students of Thanathevy Mithradeva of ON

2:15pm – 4:00pm: Sangeetha Rathnakara Tiruvarur Vaidyanathan Presents
Thakadhimi thakita - Season 7
A Grand Percussion Ensemble - A confluence of rhythm, melody, and dance

Sangeetha Rathnakara Tiruvarur Vaidyanathan (Mridangam & konnakkol)
B.V. Raghavendra Rao (violin)
N. Guruprasad (ghatam)
N. Sundar (morsing & tabla)
Sunil Kumar (kanjira & thavil)
Abilash Giriprasad (vocal)
Srivathsa Pasumarthi of CA (flute)

Dance choreography by Dr S. Divyasena, Padmini Radhakrishnan, and Meenakshi Ganesan of CA

Bharathanatyam
Meenakshi Ganesan of CA
Akila Rao of CA
Bhuvana Venkatesh of CA
Sukanya Kumar of CA
Akshaya Nivasini of CA
Tejashree Meka of CA
Shwetha Nirmal of WA
Maha Varadhan of IL
Vimina Bagavath of IN
Preetha Subramanyan of GA
Gayathri Sudhakar of GA
Gomathi Manoj of NJ
Nirupama Venkatesan of NJ
Akila Subramanyam of VA
Indhumadhi Gopalakrishnan of DE
Preethi Sathyanarayanan of TX

Kuchipudi
Sunita Pendekanti of CA
Pragnya B. Prakash of IA
Sobha Tammana of IL

4:15pm - 6:45pm: S. Saketharaman (Vocal)
Kala Rathna Kamalakiran Vinjamuri of VA (violin)
Sai Giridhar (mridangam)
Sowmiya J. Narayanan of VA (ghatam)

7:00pm - 9:30pm: Akkarai Sisters S. Subhalakshmi & S. Sornalatha (Violin)
Kulur U. Jayachandra Rao (mridangam)
Dr Ravi Balasubramanian of OR (ghatam)

Comfort Inn Ballroom

10:00pm - 11:00pm: Shardul Krishnakumar of NJ (Vocal)
Karthik Subramanian of TX (violin)
Aashrith Aravind of IL (mridangam)

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