With musical reality television shows being all the rage, it isn’t hard to see that the island is teeming with talent. However, what about those few contestants who have every bit of potential but wwere eliminated from the competition because they either lacked stage presence or their vocal skills needed fine tuning?
Not wanting the abundant talent we’ve got to be lost, Ashanthi de Alwis, Sri Lanka’s queen of HipHop, established a school of music recently to give anyone who’s got the talent the polishing they need to flourish in the local music industry.
“There’s so much talent out there just trying to make it big, but its extremely hard for a new artiste to get their name out there, get a professional level of training and get to a standard that we as professionals have already reached, which is why we take great pride in helping each individual student get the grounding their require, find their own voice and show biz persona,” she says explaining why she set up Ashanthi’s School of Music (ASM).
 |
| Ashanthi School of Music pictured at the Taj Lawn. Pic by Sanka Vidanagama |
Being the youngest and only local female artiste signed to an internationally recognised record label- Universal Music, she’s making waves across the globe. She has performed at London’s Millennium Dome, the Sydney Opera and the Canne’s Film Festival in France.
While her music is more ethnic R‘n’B and Hip Hop orientated, Ashanthi’s school encourages students to explore other genres of music and shape them into performers. Speaking about her school she says AMS is unlike other music schools as it offers more than just vocal training.
“Each individual in our school is unique in their own right and we develop their abilities to make them better performers, giving them a grounding in all areas of performance ranging from vocalisation, microphone techniques, showmanship and stage craft, basics of stage sound know how and much more,” elaborates Ashanthi.
The students enrolled at ASM range from the ages 4 to 65, and with musical talents varying from semi classic to pop, RnB, Jazz, Blues, Contemporary pop, Dance, Rock, Rap, Hip-Hop, Reggae, with even beatboxing. Ashanthi says that while the school focuses on English music they do accommodate Oriental and Hindi music as well. The School is currently in the process of compiling their debut CD which will be launched at their concert ‘Voiceology- An Anthology of Song’ to be held next weekend.
“At ASM we encourage our students to create their own songs from scratch - including lyrics, melody, vocals, harmony etc. We then weed out the best songs and they are produced at our in - house studio, where students have one on one in studio sessions with myself and my audio engineers,” Ashanthi explains. The concert is directed and choreographed by Ashanthi and Umaria- another popular young artiste, choral and live band arrangements are by Ashane Bernard, Umaria and Ashanthi.
When asked what could be expected from the concert she responds “something spectacular! This concert is all about expecting the unexpected. We have some really unique stuff lined up for our audience and I can assure you, you will not want to miss this show! Let’s just say our line up includes songs ranging from Lady Gaga to Madonna to Frank Sinatra and everything in between. In addition to what ASM’S gonna dish out on stage, we also have guest performaces by Bathiya and Santhush, Dushyanth, Randhir, Umara and Umaria as well as myself performing our songs together with ASM.”
‘Voiceology’ (An Antholgy of Song) Live in Concert will be held on Nov 27 and 28 at The British School Auditorium at 7 PM. Tickets are currently available at Commons, Bayleaf, Park Street Mews and Cafe Che or call Ashanthi’s School of Music on 0115743658 for more details. |
E-mail
