Mysuru: Vid. T.P. Vaidyanathan (85), renowned vocalist and a frontline artiste in the musical lineage of Mysore Vasudevacharya, passed away yesterday at Apollo BGS Hospital here after a brief illness.

Born in 1934 to a family from Trissur that had just then migrated to Mysore, Vaidyanathan was attracted to music at a very early age and his musical talents were nurtured by Vid. B.K. Padmanabha Rao, a direct disciple of Sri Vasudevacharya.

Vaidyanathan, a child prodigy, started giving concerts even before he entered the portals of the college and was selected as an artiste of AIR at 16. His family migrated to Chennai, in search of greener pastures, when he was 17. He married Indira, one of his classmates at Sri Padmanabha Rao’s house and the couple served the cause of music for over four decades in Chennai.

Vaidyanathan migrated back to Mysuru in 2005 and continued to serve the cause of music till his demise. He was an A-grade artiste of AIR and Doordarshan and had been featured on National Programmes. His concerts, past the age of 80, were sources of inspiration even for the youth and were being hailed as extraordinary by the critics.

While in Chennai, he served as a Lecturer in the famed Kalakshetra, the organisation to which Sri Vasudevacharya contributed a lot during his last days. Vid. Vaidyanathan produced many musical features on the compositions of Sri Mysore Sadashiva Rao and Mysore Vasudevacharya. Many frontline artistes of Chennai had got benefited through their association with Vaidyanathan. He donated a large part of his earnings to Music Sabhas and to people in need. On death, his body was also donated to the JSS Medical College. —OSR