Trivandrum Sampath
Violinist
My main influence has been my mother, K. Chandrika Devi, a violinist and retired professor of the Sree Swati Tirunal Government College of Music. I used to listen when she took classes at home and one day when I was around eight years old, I just picked up a violin and started playing.
My mother recalls that she began teaching me because she felt that there was a lot of aestheticism in the way I held the instrument. I never set out to be a professional violinist; I gradually grew into that. Since class eight I have been participating in youth fetes and winning a fair number of prizes, one of the most important being a National youth fete held in Varanasi in 2006. I represented the South Zone and came first in a competition that featured violinists of both Hindustani and Carnatic music. Since age 12, I have been giving concerts.
The turning point in my career came when I was 14 years old when I had the privilege of accompanying late maestro vocalist Neyyatinkara Vasudevan at Theerthapada Mandapam in Thiruvananthapuram.