The Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival is the largest Indian classical music festival outside of India. It was first celebrated in 1978 and has now grown to be a 12-day festival with more than 10,000 attendees with 5,000 appearing for the opening weekend. The year 2025 is the Festival's 45th year.

Schedule:

8:00am - 9:00am: Performance & Choreography Competition Winner
Lavanya Karthikeyan of NJ (Bharathanatyam)

9:15am - 10:15am: Arunagiri Aruliya Thiruppugazh Arpudha Sthalangalum Ariya Thaalangalum
by the North America Thiruppugazh Anbargal, led by Mahalakshmi Krishnan of TX

10:30am - 12:30pm: Delhi V. Muthukumar (Vocal)
Kala Rathna Kamalakiran Vinjamuri of VA (violin)
Toronto B. Gowrishanker (mridangam)
Toronto Karthik Venkataraman (kanjira)

1:00pm - 2:00pm: Rare Compositions in the Tradition of Banni Bai
A Lecture-Demonstration by Acharya Rathnakara Dr Premeela Gurumurthy
B. Ganapathyraman (mridangam)

2:15pm - 4:00pm: S. Adithyanarayanan (Vocal)
Karthik P. Iyer of IL (violin)
R. Sankaranarayanan of ON (mridangam)

4:15pm - 6:45pm: Thiruvarur Pancharathnam
Composed by Dr Rukmini Ramani

6:45pm - 9:30pm: Margam ‐ Dance Workshop Performance
by Nrithya Kala Sagaram Dr S. Divyasena
Dance mentors: Upanisha Kannan, Shabin Bright
Drinko Recital Hall

10:00am - 11:30am: Kadayanallur Tukaram Ganapathi Maharaj (Vocal)
Meenalochani (Vocal)
Surej Suresh (harmonium)
K. Venkatesan (pakhwaj)

Comfort Inn Ballroom

10:00pm - 11:00pm: Manasa Subramanian of AZ (Vocal)
Deekshitha Balaji of MI (violin)
Madhav Parthasarathy of IL (mridangam)

Buy Tickets