It gives me great pleasure to introduce our Upadhye's Violin Vadan Vidyalaya which was launched 66 years ago with a purpose of promoting the Indian Classical Music in general and providing Violin a status of SOLO instrument in particular. The Vidyalaya today, is the only music school having seven AIR President Award winners for Violin. In the quest of promoting the Indian Classical Music among the masses, the Vidyalaya carried out many projects with specific target groups such as school/college going students, upcoming artists, previous generation artists etc.

In 2003, we inaugurated Violin Academy to incorporate many such activities. Our Violin Academy has sole emphasis on the mission to promote and popularize Violin as well as Indian Music Under Violin Academy, we have taught Indian Classical Music on Violin to more than 200 people who are pursuing the art at competent levels.

To promote Music as a whole Violin Academy began Swarazankar Music Festival in 2009. The main objective is to enable common music lovers to listen to legendary artists of all Gharanas, all types of instruments and to stage those artists who have not ( or rarely ) performed. We also organise interaction of our students with these legendary maestros to help them better understand the rich tradition of the Indian Classical Music.

We started this festival in Pune, and now after more than 7 years of successful organization, we are carrying out this fragrance to Aurangabad, Nasik, Kolhapur, Mumbai, Solapur, Ratnagiri, Jalgaon, Latur, Nagpur, Amravati, Akola, Pandharpur, Satara and Ahmednagar in Maharashtra and also at Baroda, Indore, Belgaum, Mysore, Dharwad and Bangalore outside Maharashtra. The festivals have been a huge success and it is only fair to say that our organisation is privileged to be associated with all the great artists of Indian Classical Music.

Due to organisational efforts taken by Violin Academy, legendary artists such as Pt. Shivkumar Sharma, Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pt. Ajay Chakrabarty, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Begam Parveen Sultana ,Hariharan, Sivamani, Pt. Vishwamohan Bhatt, along with the youth Icons such as Rahul Sharma, Kaushiki Chakravarty, Sanjeev Abhyankar to name a few are regular performers in our SwaraZankar Music Festivals.

We have also introduced scholarships & awards for the upcoming artists in Indian Classical Music as an inspiration to drive them. To promote music amongst the youth, we invited Music Learning Youth to our festivals to interact with the Artists.The academy has developed its very unique Music Appreciation course.

The academy also conducts Listeners’ Club wherein a gathering is held to enjoy and discuss rare concerts of the past and also Regular Workshops for Lec Dems Instruments, Vocal, Dance and Rhythm are conducted all at our Academy Hall in Sahakarnagar, Pune.

In the past 7 years, our SwaraZankar Music Festival has grown leaps and bounds and all these festivals are conducted with a sole purpose and effort of Promoting and preserving our traditional Indian Classical Music. Till date we have been successful in reaching to more 1 Lakh people every year and the festivals are increasing day by day and soon we are planning to conduct these festivals in United States, Europe and Singapore.

For more information please visit our website www.swarazankar.com