Prasanna

As a guitarist and composer, Prasanna's prolific body or work is as diverse as it is integrated. This includes over eleven Carnatic albums, collaborative CDs Tirtha with Vijay Iyer and Nitin Mitta, Raga Bop Trio with Steve Smith and saxophonist George Brooks, the Carnatic/rock Jimi Hendrix tribute album Electric Ganesha Land, the jazz fusion album Be the Change featuring several Grammy Award winning artists from the jazz world, an eclectic solo guitar album Peaceful, the triple guitar project Guitars with the Belgian band Aka Moon, and numerous guitar tracks on Indian film soundtracks for composers such as A.R. Rahman, Illayaraja and others. He has composed original music for documentaries, feature films, and contemporary dance theater.

He has performed and recorded with jazz/fusion artists Joe Lovano, Esperanza Spalding, Larry Coryell, Anthony Jackson, Omar Hakim, Victor Wooten, Airto Moreira, Alphonso Johnson, Aka Moon, Trilok Gurtu, Steve Smith etc and Indian musicians A.R.Rahman, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Illayaraja, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Ustad Shujaat Khan, Dr. L. Subramaniam, Umayalpuram Sivaraman, Trichy Sankaran and others.

With an engineering degree in Naval Architecture from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, he went on to pursue his passion for music and graduated Magna-Cum-Laude with honors from the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Carnatic Music for 2003 award from H.H. Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, and the Berklee College of Music Guitar Achievement and Music-Composition Achievement Awards among others.

Prasanna founded Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music in 2009 and served as its President for close to 5 years.