Mysuru: Veene Seshanna (1852-1926), an exponent of veena, born in a family of musicians was the Asthana Vidwan of the Princely State of Mysore. He displayed a gifted musical talent as a young boy and came under the tutelage of Mysore Sadashiva Rao and Veene Venkatasubbayya.

Starting his musical journey with vocal, he later became proficient in veena. His musical talent was prodigious and is reputed to have mastered many instruments other than the veena, like  violin, piano  and swarabat.

Seshanna has composed 53 compositions, including Swarajatis, Padas, Javalis and many Tillanas. He had a deep understanding of Hindustani music. His Tillanas in the ragas Behag and Darbari Kannada are proof of this.

To remember this legend in a novel way, Ganabharathi has organised a day-long Veena Festival on Nov.12. This festival hosts around 20 artistes from Mysuru, Bengaluru and Chennai.  The festival starts at 10 am and each artiste would be performing for a duration of 60 minutes. The programme schedule is as follows:

10 am: Vidu. Bharathi, Vid. Kumaraswamy, Vid. S. Manjunath; 11 am:  Vid. D. Balakrishna, Vid. G.S. Ramanujam, Vid.  S. Manjunath; 12 noon: Vidu. Geetha Ramanand  and Vidu. Revathi Murthy, Vid. R. Adamya, Vid. M.R. Manjunath; 2 pm: Vid. Prashanth Iyengar, Vid. R. Adamya, Vid. M.R. Manjunath; 3 pm: Vid. Balu Masti, Vid. H.L. Shivashankaraswamy, Vid. V.S. Ramesh; 4 pm: Vid. S.V. Sahana, Vid. G.S. Ramanujam, Vid. V.S. Ramesh;  6 pm: Vid. Mudikondan Ramesh, Vid. H. L. Shivashankaraswamy, Vid. Sharath Koushik; 7 pm: Vidu. S. Rajalakshmi, Vid. Tumkur B. Ravishankar, Vid. Sharath Koushik; 8 pm: Vid. Yogavandana, Vid. Tumkur B. Ravishankar and Vid. Vikram Bhardwaj.