Program Schedule ( Sunday, 06/13/2009 ): 12: 00 - 3: 30 PM Singing Competition on Ilaiya Raja Songs (Adults/Kids) 12: 00 PM Ticket Counter Opens 4: 30 PM Welcome Speech by Vijaya Aasuri, Event’s MC 4: 31 PM Singer Mallikharjun’s introduction & a commemorational tribute to Late. Veturi 4: 32 PM Prardhana Geetham (by Himaja Movva) 4: 35 PM Jyothi Prajwalana by Dr. Kumar Gadamasetti (Chief Guest) 4: 40 PM A Few Words by Srinivas Chimata, Event Organizer 4: 42 PM Introductory Speech on Ilaya Raja (by KiranPrabha, Koumudi.net’s editor) 4: 45 PM First Song starts 7: 00 PM Dinner Break (Food Stalls Outside the Auditorium by Peacock Restaurant) 7: 30 PM Saxophone Performance by Ramesh Maraj (www.indisax.com) 7: 45 PM Second Part of the Concert starts 8: 00 PM Felicitation to the Sponsors 8: 10 PM Second Part Continues 9: 00 PM Mementoes (to Singers, Musicians, Volunteers & Singing Competition Winners) 9: 15 PM Vote of Thanks (by Vijaya Aasuri & Srinivas Chimata) Grand Sponsor Exclusive Media Partner Food Catering PannuDental.com; Fremont/San Jose/Cupertino PravasVani.com; on KLOK 1170 AM Santa Clara/Fremont/Evergreen/Mountain View Other Media Partners Padma Bhushan “Maestro” Ilaiya Raja: Ilaiya Raja is a living legend in the South Indian Film Music and he is undoubtedly the most popular music director in the 80’s in India. His original name is Daniel Ra- jayya and was born on June 3, 1943 in Vannaipuram (Madurai Dt.). His first official movie is Annakkili (1976), which was later remade by Singeetam Srinivasa Rao in Telugu as Raama Chilaka (1978), albeit he ghost-composed for some movies ear- lier. In Telugu, his official debut movie was Bhadrakaali (1976). He started off his career as a guitarist in the music troupes of the popular music directors, GK Venkatesh and Salil Chowdhury. During his early days in Chennai, he used to par- ticipate (along with his brothers, Bhaskar and Gangai Amaran) in a lot of stage shows that were performed by SP Balu and his music band and that proximity with Balu established an ever-lasting affectionate friendship between them. Due to his close attachment with S. Janaki (who used to sing most of GK Venkatesh’s songs in Kannada) during his early days, he later used took her as his Aasthana singer for a long time. Ilaiya Raja came into limelight and became an instant youth craze with the dubbed movies such as Vayasu Pilichindi, Erra Gulaabeelu etc during the late 70’s. Starting from Chiranjeevi’s Abhilasha (1983), Ilaiya Raja composed for straight Telugu mov- ies on a regular basis and he since then churned out hundreds of haunting melodies in the 80’s (a few examples are some Chiru movies and most of Vamsi movies) and in the 90’s. In addition, a lot of Kamal Hassan’s Tamil dubbed movies too gave the Telugu music lovers a wonderful taste of Ilaiya Raja’s music. A lot of current genera- tion music directors are “Ekalavya Sishyulu” of this great music director. For a few K Viswanadh’s Telugu movies, he composed the wonderful tunes for the already writ- ten lyrics (in contrary to his regular style of first tunes and then lyrics). He hitherto composed for 650 Tamil movies and 125 straight Telugu movies and for a hanful of Kannada, Malayalam and Hind movies too. His recent most Hindi movie was Amitab starrer, Paa. Balu always eulogizes him as a genius music director and it is often quoted that Ilaiya Raja composed all songs for a few movies (such as Anveshana and Preminchu-Pellaadu) with in a record time of just 30 minutes. He introduced the singers Chitra, Malasian Vasudevan, Mano, Sujatha etc to the film industry. He composed for a record number of 54 movies in the years 1984 and 1992 (one movie per week)! He is a recipient of the prestigious “Padma Bhushan” Award from the Govern- ment of India for the year 2009. He received three National awards (Saagara Sangamam – Telugu, Sindhu Bhairavi - Tamil, and Rudra Veena - Telugu) and innumerous Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh State Awards. He is the first Asian to compose a full-length western classical symphony in July 1993 and the one-hour long symphony was performed by John Scott of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. After the senseless lyrics and the transient, cacophonic music started invading the South Indian Fim Industry starting from the mid-90’s, Ilaiya Raja slowed down his movies drastically and has since then been working only on selective movies. He shuns the media publicity, rarely attends any felicitation or public functions and is now leading a simple and quiet life. He was a trend-setter in the 80’s Telugu film music with his unique brand that was quite different from the melodious KV Mahadevan’s style and from the mass tempo-based Chakra- vathi’s style. We can proudly declare that Ilaiya Raja is the LAST LEGEND of the golden era of the melodious Telugu music. Srinivasa Rao Chimata (Event Organizer & Founder, ChimataMusic.com): Srinivas is very passionate about Telugu melodies and a hardcore fan of SP Balu, P Suseela, KV Mahadevan and Sathyam. He started ChimataMusic.com (Paatha Paatala Parnasaala) in Novermber 2005 to bring all forgotten and no-more-available Telugu melodies to a single place and soon the site has become so popular that SP Balu himself visits the web site on a regular basis to find some of his own songs that he himself doesn't have any more with him. Suryanarayana Guduru (CTO of ChimataMusic.com) and other like-minded music lovers all over the world are helping Srinivas in making their web site as a unique one. Promoting the nostalgic Telugu music (and bringing it a due recognition) is always one of his passionate hobbies. Srini started a series of Telugu musical concerts in the Silicon Valley in commemoration of our great Music directors. As a first one in the series, ChimataMusic.com in association with the local Telugu Association, BATA, successfully organized a musical concert on a popular music director, Sathyam in June 2009. And KV Madevan concert was the second one in the series, held in November 2009 with over 1200 music lovers attending the program. Ilaiya Raja Concert is the third one in the nostalgic tribute series and the special attraction of this con- cert is the presence of the popular play-back singer, Mallikharjun with the Bay Area’s best Live Orchestra of ten wonderful musicians. With enough encouragement from the Telugu music lovers, ChimataMusic.com would love to continue this nostalgic series with concerts on other great composers such as Ramesh Naidu, GK Venkatesh/Rajan-Nagendra, MS Viswanthan, Chakravarthi, and Saluri/Pendyala in the near future. As an extension to the ChimataMusic web site and the series of the musical concerts, he is currently working with a film journalist-cum- writer (Pulagam Chinnarayana) on publishing a comprehensive book on all Telugu Music Directors’ bio-graphical information (with 700+ pages) and the book is expected to be released by SP Balu in Hyderabad in the last week of July. He, along with his web site’s music lov- ers, raised $10,000.00 in donations and handed it over to the 80-year old JV Raghavulu (a popular Telugu music director, who was suffer- ing from a bad financial crunch during the last phase of his life) in a felicitation function (Dr. CiNaRe and Smt. P Suseela being the chief Raghu Malladi (Event Promoter & Owner of PravasVani): Raghu Malladi is a household name in the Bay Area with his popular PravasVani Radio (Bay Area Telugu Kendram Program) on the local 1170 AM station. He stepped forward to be a part of this exciting concert to help out Srinivas Chimata in making the concert an awesome one. Raghu Malladi is a passionate lover of Telugu saahithyam and Telugu movies. He always encourages the Bay Area based Telugu Saahithi Sadassulu, Ashtaavadhaanaalu, Meet/Greet popular writers/lyricists etc, to name a new few. He has played a major role in this event’s publicity by giving an unlimited coverage on his morning Bay Area Telugu Kendram Radio program for about a month. Singers: 1. Mallikharjun Boda: Mallikharjun is best known as a popular playback singer in the South Indian film industry and an energetic stage performer. He originally hails from Vizag and now lives in Chennai with his wife, Gopika Poornima (another popular playback singer). He first got noticed with E TV's Paad- hutha Teeyagaa program and starting from the year 2000, he participated in 200+ musical concerts for various social and cultural organizations in India. He has hitherto sung in more than 150 movies (Telugu, Tamil and Kannada) and also has sung 1000+ songs for various devotional and private music albums and participated in various music concerts across the world. He accompanied Dr. SP Balu in his USA Live-in- Concerts in 2004 and 2006 and performed for the Telugu organizations such as TANA, ATA in the USA and World Telugu Federation, Singa- pore/Dubai in between 2002 and 2008. Now, he is exclusively coming from India as a lead singer for this Ilaiya Raja show and will also be a judge for the Ilaya Raja Songs singing competition program. 2 & 3. Shilpa Uppuluri & Deepika Uppuluri (of Geetam.com): Shilpa and Deepika are popularly known as "Hyderabad Nightingale Sisters". They sing a wide variety of songs in Telugu, Hindi and Tamil lan- guages including classical, light, devotional, film songs, Urdu ghazals and Telugu Padyams. They have together performed in more than 500 concerts in India and abroad including their performances for various Telugu cultural societies in the US.