Sruti Sarathy

Sruti Sarathy is a leading Carnatic violinist, singer, and composer, a rare artist who possesses both mastery in the rigorous classical form as well as a boundary-pushing musical vision. She lights up the stage in diverse contexts across the globe, from the sabhas of Chennai to radical performance spaces in San Francisco. Sarathy performs with top Carnatic musicians and has received awards three years in a row for her performances at the prestigious Madras Music Academy, India. A Bay Area native, Sruti is a versatile composer for Carnatic, crossover, film/theater, and experimental contexts. Her genre-defying original music is a meeting place for Indian classical ragas, cross-cultural improvisational forms, South Asian diasporic history, and poetry. Sarathy is the bandleader of the ensemble Carnatic Crossings, and plays violin in the Carnatic trio Unfretted. She leads the Songs for Many Lives: A Carnatic Diaspora Songbook project. She is a Fulbright scholar and has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo and OneBeat. Sarathy’s soulful sound brings out the voice of the Indian violin in a contemporary and imaginative way.