Mandolin mastro, U Shrinivas (45) passed away at Apollo hospital in Chennai at about 9.30 on Friday morning after a period of illness. He is reported to have had a liver problem.The news has come as a shoker to all music loving people and sad is that he was just 45 years old. It is an irreplaceable loss indeed, to the world of music.He was born on February 28, 1969 at a village near Palakol, in West Godavari district, AP. He was a gentle giant and one of our greatest musicians, truly worthy of being described as a genius. At the age of six he picked up his father Satyanarayana's mandolin. Upon realising the talent of his son, his father started teaching him.Soon, Satyanarayana's guru, Rudraraju Subbaraju, realized the potential of U Shrinivas and started teaching him. Since Rudraraju Subbaraju did not know how to play the mandolin he would just sing and Shrinivas would play it on the mandolin. His brother Rajesh is also an accomplished mandolin player.
He also died in 2014 due to liver failure.Shrinivas made his first public Carnatic concert performance in 1978 in Gudivada, AP, during the Thyagaraja Aradhana festival. Soon, he came to perform in the Madras Music Season in 1981 for the Indian Fine Arts Society. In 1983, he performed at the JazzFest Berlin where the audience requested him to do a repeat performance.He continued touring the world—Australia, Southeast Asia and then Southwest Asia, followed by the United States and Canada.
