Sriram Kartik sweeps 10 awards including the ‘Best Junior contestant’ across Carnatic vocal and mrudangam; prizes presented by eminent Vidwan Sikkil Gurucharan on 23 Aug 2026 in MumbaiA fifteen-year-old from Powai has won ten awards at the Music Competition 2026 conducted by Sri Shanmukhananda Bharatiya Sangeetha Vidyalaya and Natya Vidyalaya, competing in both Carnatic vocal and mrudangam.
Sriram Kartik received awards at prize distribution ceremony held on Sunday (Aug 23, 2026) on the occasion of Shanmukhananda’s Carnataka Sangeetha Pon Mazhai Thiruvizha.
Sriram Kartik, a Class X IGCSE student at Podar International School, received the awards at the prize distribution ceremony held on Sunday (Aug 23, 2026) on the occasion of Shanmukhananda’s Carnataka Sangeetha Pon Mazhai Thiruvizha, at the Sri Shanmukhananda Fine Arts and Sangeetha Sabha in Matunga. The prizes were presented by Shanmukha Sangeetha Shiromani Vidwan Shri Sikkil Gurucharan, the eminent Carnatic vocalist, who presided over the ceremony.Vidwan Sikkil C Gurucharan is a leading Indian Carnatic classical vocalist and youth ambassador for the art form. A singer born into a family of flautists, and grandson of Sikkil Kunjumani, the elder of the Sikkil Sisters, he trained under B Krishnamurthy and Vaigal S. Gnanaskandan, himself a disciple of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer and gave his first concert at The Music Academy, Chennai at the age of twelve. Recipient of the Kalaimamani award from the Tamil Nadu government in 2020, Sikkil C Gurucharan has been featured by India Today as one of the 35 Game Changers Under 35 in India.Sriram Kartik won 9 individual prizes — five first prizes, three seconds and one third. He was also awarded a cash prize for being the Best Junior contestant winning the maximum number of prizes in the 10-to-15 years age category.The competition, the Vidyalaya’s 70th annual, was held on February 7 and 8 across Carnatic vocal, violin, veena, mrudangam, Hindustani vocal, sitar and tabla. It drew more than 300 participants from across India and overseas, contesting in three age groups: 10 to 15, 16 to 28, and 29 and above.Sriram’s two mrudangam prizes came in the only two categories open to his age group — a first for tani avartanam in roopakam and misra chapu talams, and a second for adi talam with five jathi mohras, awarded under the TS Nandakumar’s Percussive Arts Centre Endowment and the Guru TS Nandakumar Endowment respectively.His seven vocal prizes spanned first places in compositions of the Trinity, varnams, Purandaradasa kritis; the Silver Lamp Prize for keertanams and kritis; second places in Subramania Bharatiyar compositions and Tamizh compositions; and a third in GNB kritis.Every prize at Shanmukhananda is attached to an endowment instituted in the name of an artist, a patron or an institution. He won awards under the following endowments namely – GNB Endowment, the Kalki Memorial, the Dr S Pinakapani Endowment, the BVS Iyengar Memorial and the Lakshmi Gopalakrishna Memorial. The Best Junior award came under the Smt. Parvathy Subramaniam Endowment and S Ramakrishnan Memorial.Sriram began learning the mrudangam at the age of five, under Acharya Ratna Vidwan Mumbai Shri Shankaranarayanan at Powai Fine Arts. A decade on, he has kept at it through the school years in which most students of classical music quietly stop — the age at which coaching classes, board examinations and the ordinary pull of everything else tend to close the practice room door for good.
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Sustaining it alongside school is the part a prize list does not show. Practice sessions run two and a half to three hours. Nine vocal categories at 5-6 compositions a piece meant something close to 45-50 pieces in which he participated of which he won prizes across seven categories, readied to a standard that would survive a judging panel, with two percussion categories besides.He now receives higher tutelage in mrudangam from Padma Vibhushan and Sangeet Natak Academi Awardee Vidwan Dr Umayalpuram K Sivaraman, and trains in Carnatic vocal music under Acharya Ratnakara Vidwan Sherthalai Dr KN Renganatha Sharma and Vidushi Dr Mohana Sharma. He holds a CCRT Scholarship for Mrudangam from the ministry of culture, and presented his mrudangam arangetram in June last year, the day after his fourteenth birthday.
