Young artists honoured with Bismillah award

New Delhi: Thirty-three young artists who proved their mettle in various genres of performing arts were Tuesday honoured here with the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar by the Sangeet Natak Akademi for the year 2009. The awards were presented by theatre personality Ratan Thiyam, vice-chairman of Sangeet Natak Akademi.

The award was instituted in 2006 by the Akademi, the national academy of music, dance and drama, an autonomous body under the ministry of culture. The award is aimed to encourage outstanding young artists and recognise them at the national level early in life. Some of the recipients included Omkar Shrikant Dadarkar for Hindustani vocal; Murad Ali for sarangi, Sanjeev Shankar and Ashwani Shankar for shehnai in the Hindustani instrumental music segment, CS Sajeev for Carnatic vocal, A Chandan Kumar for flute and V Balaji for mridangam in the Carnatic instrumental music segment and Anil Srinivasan for creative and experimental music. Moirangthem Meina Singh of the Nata Sankirtana of Manipur received the prize for traditional music. In the field of dance, Ragini Chander Shekhar got the award for Bharatnayam, Monisa Nayak was recognised for her Kathak while Hanglem Indudevi got the award for Manipuri dance. IANS