(Source: www.veenagayathri.com)

Veena (E.) Gayathri is a household name with a celebrity stature in any musically literate home in India and abroad.

Veena Gayathri was born on 9th November 1959 to Smt. Kamala Aswathama, a veteran veena vidushi and Sri G. Aswathama, a popular film music director of telugu cinema.

When Veena Gayathri was a toddler, her father noticed a popular phenomenon in her when she used to stamp her feet on the floor and sway the anklet bells in tune with any rythmic beat she happened to hear. Her father realized the prodigy in the child. She developed an unconscious attachment to veena and started playing on it for hours together unobtrusively in the pooja room. But if there was any intrusion or disturbance during her veena Sadhana, she used to burst into tears and cry. Her father then started coaching her in manodharma and mother trained her in the intricacies of veen techniques. This is how to veena Gayathri blossommed into a veena artiste at an unimaginably tender age of 6.

She launched her eventful and illustrious career by making her debut in giving veena concert in Karpaga Vinayagar temple in R.A.Puram.

During the year 1968, when Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha, Triplicane invited her to participate in their Saint Thyagaraja Festival she was a child prodigy who was hardly 9 years old. Her performance was a resounding success in front of a huge audience of musicologists and experts. Prof. P. Sambamurthy the renowned musicologist instantly hailed veena Gayathri as child prodigy. This was her maiden stage performance which not only got her adulation, accolades and econiums but also launched her on a long and fulfilling musical journey.

Subsequently in the year 1970. She gave another concert in Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha again on public demand. She had never looked back from then on.

During her childhood days she was well-known as Baby Gayathri. Her penance on veena for years and years has naturally given her the name Veena Gayathri implying that veena is synonyms with Gayathri and Gayathri is the embodiment of veena. Her admirers who have been enraptured by her melody, bhava purity of sahithyam, thala suddham, layam and lakshanam constitute a great majority of music lovers all over the world. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.