Swara Music School
Arihant Arden, M1005, Sector 1, Bisrakh Jalalpur, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201306, India
http://swaramusicschools.com/
Swara Music School is a vibrant, community-centered institution dedicated to cultivating authentic musical excellence in both Indian classical and contemporary genres. Founded in 2012 by veena artist and educator Ananya Krishnan, the school began in the living room of her small Chennai apartment with just six students and a single tanpura. In little over a decade it has expanded into a three-story, light-filled campus near the Adyar river, serving roughly 350 pupils from ages four to seventy-four.
The ground level houses a refurbished 90-seat recital hall known as “Shruti Sabha.” Its warm spruce panels were reclaimed from old Chettinad mansions, giving the space a faint, honeyed fragrance. Monsoon concerts here set an informal mood: off-white khadi cushions invite listeners to sit cross-legged while performers are illuminated by an antique brass lamp that once belonged to Swati Tirunal. The room is fitted with discreet acoustic baffles overhead, allowing a single mridangam syllable to ripple cleanly across the rafters.
Climbing the terracotta-tiled staircase, one reaches the individual lesson studios. Each is named after a raga—Kalyani, Charukeshi, Behag—displayed in hand-painted tiles above the doorway. In Kalyani you will find Sarod Guru Rajat Sen sending students home with hand-copied alap notation in Hindustani sargam; next door, Behag hosts Chennai’s busiest child prodigy, 11-year-old Akash, who can glide through “Raghuvamsa Sudha” even while texting emoticons. Sound bleed is minimized by double-layered jack-fruit wood doors made by local carpenters.
The upper floor is equally divided between ensemble labs and a digital recording suite. The labs stock everything from 17th-century tanpuras to Ableton rigs, encouraging fusion experiments: last month an oud/qānūn trio was seen rehearsing with a kora and a bansuri under disco lights. Students log hours on high-end interfaces, then cut demos that are critiqued weekly by visiting engineers from A. R. Rahman’s KM Conservatory.
Swara’s philosophy prizes both discipline and discovery. A beginner must first complete “Sruti Sampoorna,” a 12-week foundation course focused on ear training and tonic stability. Beyond that, each learner co-creates individualized learning maps with their mentor—some favor graded Trinity Rock & Pop exams, while others choose the traditional guru-shishya route with bi-annual arangetrams. Scholarships, named after M. S. Subbulakshmi, cover up to 80 % tuition for under-resourced but committed talent; last year four recipients boarded the school bus at dawn for ragas at 6 a.m., then attended local corporation school at 8.
Community engagement pulses through the calendar: monsoon kutcheris at neighborhood temples, public “Raga Walks” along the riverbank with musicians explaining swara secrets to curious early-morning joggers, and a free weekly open stage for subway buskers where tuning is provided on the house. Annual festival “Swara Samvaad” invites alumni like Mumbai-based indie singer Abhishek Sekhar to reunite with their first veena teacher, creating inter-generational dialogues that keep the institution’s heartbeat steady, bright, and ever-evolving.
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- Published: July 29, 2025
