Vijayanagaram, AP: Avasarala Kanyakumari from Andhra Pradesh received the highest honour of India, ‘Padma Shri’ on Thursday for her excellent dedication as a musician.

The first Indian Female ‘Avasarala Kanyakumari’ has received the highest honour ‘Padma Shri’. Kanyakumari is a female violinist in Carnatic music and is nominated by both states Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh government to ‘Padma Shri’ for her greatness as a musician. She is the first ever South Indian Woman to receive this respect in field of Violin.

She is a native of Vijayanagaram, Andhra Pradesh and was a student of 3 great legendry gurus, Ivaturi Vijeswara Rao, M.Chanrasekaran and M.L Vasanthakumari. She worked as an accompanist for a long time and is the first woman violinist to visit US in 1976 and still continuing it. Kanyakumari has been teaching for large number students across Indian and abroad many of whom are very popular artist.

Her lessons will be available in the form of DVD from fundamentals to kacheri status which will be helpful for students to recast their learning. She expressed her feeling for receiving highest honour i.e. “It is easy to play for a vocalist but difficult to follow instrumentalists as they follow a different technique. God has blessed me with that gift,” she smiles.

She got many number of awards in which ‘Padma Shri’ is her fourth highest civilian award from Indian Government in 2015. She totally dedicated her life to music and recently composed rags bearing the names of the 7 hills of Thirumala.