Sikkil C. Gurucharan is a leading musician and a youth ambassador for Carnatic music. A prime time artist during the Chennai music season and a recipient of numerous awards including the prestigious Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar Award, Kalaimamani and Tchaikovsky Award for the best musician of the year among many, Gurucharan has not only made a mark in the traditional concert paddhati style but also worked to broaden audience appeal by creating collaborative projects with world renowned musicians while retaining the spirit of the art form. In 2015, Gurucharan received a Nehru-Fulbright Excellence Award, and was in residence at UC Davis between January and April 2015.

The album “Miles from India”, a collaborative effort, was nominated for the Best Contemporary Jazz Album at the 51st Grammy Awards. The magazine India Today featured him among 35 Game Changers under the age of 35 in India. The Tamil Nadu Government conferred its highest honour of Kalaimamani on Gurucharan in 2020. He has also acted in two Tamil movies, Sarvam Thala Mayam and Putham Pudhu Kaalai. 

Instagram : @sikkilgurucharan

Sikkil Gurucharan is Artist in Residence at the UC Davis Humanities Institute, Spring 2023. This concert is part of that residency.

Kamalakiran Vinjamuri started his journey with the violin from his grand-father, Sri. Parthasarathy Iyengar. He subsequently had training from Smt. Malladi Vijayalakshmi.  His father Sri.Subhash Vinjamuri, started teaching him the violin at the age of 7.  He has been under the tutelage of Sangeethakalanidhi A. Kanyakumari since 2006.
Kamalakiran has won numerous awards from prestigious institutions including Sri Mylapore Fine Arts, Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha (2010, 2013), Sri Krishna Gana Sabha (2014), to name a few. In the 2014 Spirit of Youth series, and the 2016 and 2017 Music Seasons, Kamalakiran was selected as the best violinist in the prestigious Music Academy in Chennai. As both a soloist and accompanist, Kamalakiran has won several accolades and has accompanied several leading artists of both past and present generations.  Kamalakiran has also widely worked in collaborations with musicians of different genres. As a soloist, he has performed across Asia, the US, and Europe.

Abhinav Seetharaman had his initial training on the mridangam at the age of 7. He first learned from Sri N. Ganesh Kumar and Sri Vijay Ganesh, and later proceeded to learn from Sri Tiruvarur Vaidyanathan. Currently, he is under the mentorship of Sri Kumar
Kanthan and mridangam maestro Guru Karaikudi R. Mani. He has performed worldwide with India’s leading musicians such as Dr. N. Ramani, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Sudha Raghunathan, Ganesh and Kumaresh, Unnikrishnan, Sikkil Gurucharan, and Ramakrishnan Murthy. Outside of performing, Abhinav has also taken up an educator’s role, conducting lecture-demonstrations, seminars, and workshops on South Indian percussion at universities and institutions across the United States.
Abhinav is currently a graduate student in public policy at Harvard University and an alumnus of Columbia University.