Kala Ramnath

Kala Ramnath was born in Chennai, the first child of Malathy and T. N. Mani; her father worked in Indian film music, and the wider family includes the violinists T. N. Krishnan and Dr N. Rajam. She was started on violin and voice at two and a half by her grandfather, Narayan Iyer, and represents the seventh generation of violinists in the family. She began performing at fourteen, presented in concert by her aunt.

For fifteen years she studied with the Mewati gharana vocalist Pandit Jasraj, and her playing follows the vocal line of khayal on the violin rather than a separate instrumental idiom.

She has played the major Indian festivals and, abroad, the Sydney Opera House, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Carnegie Hall. She has worked with the London Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras and with musicians from other traditions including Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Hilary Hahn, and founded the cross-genre groups Raga Afrika, Global Conversation and Elements. She contributed to the score of the film "Blood Diamond". She plays in the trio Triveni with the veena player Jayanthi Kumaresh and Ustad Zakir Hussain.

She teaches and gives workshops internationally, including at the Rotterdam Conservatory, the University of Giessen and the Weill Institute at Carnegie Hall, runs the Kalashree foundation, and in 2021 launched indianclassicalmusic.com to document the tradition on video.

Her own site presents her under the name The Singing Violin, and her work reaches well beyond Hindustani concert music: she performed on two compositions on the Grammy-nominated album Miles From India, composed a piece on the Grammy-winning In 27 Pieces, and contributed a composition to the Kronos Quartet's 50 For The Future project. She teaches through one-to-one, group and masterclass programmes announced on her website.

Hindustani violin played as a singing line — the gayaki approach learned through fifteen years of khayal study with Pandit Jasraj, with the slides and held notes of the voice carried on the bow.