Biography

Prasanna is a professional guitarist based out of the capital city of Tamil Nadu, Chennai. The quintessential Indian renaissance man is a pioneer in performing Carnatic music on the guitar, an engineering graduate from IIT, composer for award-winning movies, internationally acclaimed guitarist in contemporary rock, blues and jazz, a Magna-Cum-Laude graduate of Berklee College of Music (London), and an entrepreneurial visionary who established a world class music college that blends the Indian Gurukula system of learning with contemporary Western college education pedagogy. Prasanna was among the top 50 creative Indians by Open Magazine in 2010 alongside the likes of Amir Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Arundhati Roy, Viswanathan Anand, and others. Prasanna also belongs to a selected group of Indian composers along with AR Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) and Pandit Ravi Shankar (Gandhi) who have composed music for Oscar-winning movies. A fearless contemporary music innovator yet steeped in the authentic Carnatic tradition with six years of study with guru vocalist, Tiruvarur Balasubramaniam, and 26 years of study with masterful violinist guru, A Kanyakumari, Prasanna was the first to discover the possibilities of Carnatic music for thousands of musicians and listeners from the around the world. He was awarded the ‘Life Time Achievement Award’ by HH Sri Jayendra Saraswathi for Carnatic music in 2006. Prasanna has composed music for documentary movies like the 2009 Oscar Award-winning ‘Smile Pinki’ and feature films like ‘Framed’ and many others. His artistic collaboration with two-time Oscar-winning film composer, AR Rahman, includes arranging and orchestrating the title score of the 2002 Oscar nominated Bollywood movie, Lagaan, and numerous other sessions. Prasanna has also worked with many top Indian composers on dozens of film soundtracks.