In a world where we desperately need more love, inspiration and hope, comes a little maestro to give us all huge lashings of sheer magic.
Listening to Lydian Nadhaswaram play the piano, it is easy to forget he is only 13 years of age. It is just as hard to see him as a musical prodigy as his genius comes out very accomplished.
In the finals of the US-based show ‘The World’s Best’ its first ever champion Lydian played two pianos at one time at an impeccable speed, blindfolded!
As if that is not enough the cherubic youngster also possesses such an endearing smile – a smile that he can give anytime to monitoring lenses of high-powered cameras even as his fingers go wild on the piano.
In a tumultuous week where we have witnessed gruesome killings, here is a little boy who has single-handedly lifted hearts and spirits of many people around the world struggling to come to terms with yet another mindless act of terror.
Week after week of The World’s Best’s first season, the boy-wonder had wowed accomplished judges and even appeared on ‘The Ellen Show’ but it isn’t just celebrities that have been charmed.
It appears like the world has fallen in love with little Lydian whose performances have gone wild on YouTube.
Back in India, and particularly in his hometown Chennai, Lydian is already an established name. His growth has been carefully monitored and nurtured ever since he was two-years-old when his musician father Varshan Satish and wife Jhansi realised they had a potential genius.
When the couple had their son they had wanted to name him after a melodic scale. Since Satish’s favourite Kalyani (Indian Carnatic musical scale) is a feminine term, they picked its Western equivalent, Lydian. To this was added a second name, Nadhaswaram – a South Indian wind instrument considered so auspicious it is used in temple ceremonies and at weddings.
The name Lydian Nadhaswaram was coined and neither parent could have known how prophetic it was going to be. The couple also has an older daughter called Amirthavarshini, also musically inclined and Lydian’s big inspiration.
Lydian’s sterling musical ability is being compared to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who played all the principal instruments of his day. In Lydian there certainly lives a little Mozart. Apart from the drums and the piano, he is also proficient on the tabla, the mridangam, the guitar, the chromatic harmonica, the melodica, the darbuka, the violin, the ukulele, the marimba, and Indian folk music instruments such as the kanjira, the thappatai, and the morsing!
It was tough and risky in conservative India but Lydian’s parents decided to pull him out of regular school some years ago to home school him so that he could devote more time to his passion. The pay off was immediate as his prodigious talent began to show, which impressed the parents enough to also pull out their talented daughter.
For years now Lydian has been well known to music teachers and aficionados in Chennai, having worked with numerous experts, most notably spending four years training on a full-scholarship at the Oscar winner AR Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory under Surojeet Chatterji in the Russian Piano School.
Principal and founder AR Rahman says, “In a world with so much negativity and restlessness, Lydian’s success has brought hope, love and happiness to our lives. He brings such inspiration to so many, such is the extraordinary power of music.”
Indeed!
