music. He first came to the United States in 1958 on a Fulbright fellowship, studying ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1958 to 1960, and later teaching there. He returned to India and was Head of the Department of Music at the University of Madras from 1961 to 1965. He settled in the United States in 1966, and also taught at the California Institute of the Arts. Following the earning of his Ph.D. from Wesleyan University in 1975, he taught at that university for many years. Among his best known students were Anuradha Sriram, T.R. Moorthy, Jon B. Higgins, Douglas Knight and David Nelson. While a majority of South Indian (Carnatic) flautists play with the 8-holed flute fashioned by T.R. Mahalingam (Mali), students of T. Viswanathan play with the 7-hole flute innovated by Swaminatha Pillai. Viswanathan and his brother Ranganathan recorded the music for the Satyajit Ray documentary film Bala (1976), about their sister, the bharatanatyam dancer Balasaraswati. He died of a heart attack on 10 September 2002 in Hartford, Connecticut. He is survived by his wife Josepha Cormack Viswanathan, one daughter (Jayasri), and two sons (Kumar and Kerey). In 2004, Oxford University Press USA published a book co-authored by T. Viswanathan and Matthew Harp Allen, entitled Music in South India: The Karnatak Concert Tradition and Beyond, from the series Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. Awards and honors Viswanathan received some of the most prestigious awards in India, including Instrumental Musician of the Year (Kalaimamani) from the Government of Tamil Nadu (1978), the President's Award from the Sangeet Natak Akademi (1987), and the Madras Music Academy's Sangeetha Kalanidhi ("Treasure of Musical Art"), the highest award given to a South Indian musician (1988). In 1992, Viswanathan became the first Indian musician to be awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Also in 1992, he received a research fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies. See also References External links T Viswanathan page at MusicalNirvana.com site T. Viswanathan page from David Nelson site T. Viswanathan tribute from Afropop Worldwide site T. Viswanathan: In Memoriam from Sruti Magazine, Chennai, India Sangeethapriya: Indian Fine Arts 1927 births 2002 deaths Tamil musicians Male Carnatic singers Carnatic singers Venu players Indian flautists Indian emigrants to the United States National Heritage Fellowship winners American people