Artist Spotlight: Anand Lakshminarayan

Anand Lakshminarayan, alumnus of UC Berkeley, graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He chose this major because growing up he had a passion for video games, which naturally translated into interests in the computer science field. He strongly believes that nowadays software enables us to change every facet of society from education, transportation, communication, and obviously gaming so he really wanted to study it in college. He currently works as a Program Manager at Microsoft.

Interview:

What are your interests/hobbies? What makes you passionate about them? How did you get into them?

My main interest is in music. It started out with Carnatic (South Indian Classical) music training when I was very young. I performed my vocal arangetram, in June 2011, and have been continuing to learn ever since. I went to India for three months last summer to learn from various teachers as well. Singing has always been a part of my life and I want to continuously improve with every song I sing and track I release online. Even in college, music became a huge part of my undergrad when I joined UC Berkeley Dil Se, Berkeley's premiere South Asian Acappella team. Now I am hoping to combine my passion of Indian music and American music into the tracks I am about to release, as well as future songs that will come for years to come. Other than that, I am very passionate about Cal football and basketball, as well as the SF 49ers and Golden State Warriors. For fun, I like to hang out with friends, play video games, sports, or board games such as Settlers of Catan.

What have you been working on lately? Any other projects coming up?

The main project I am working on right now is my "Throwback Covers" playlist. This is a set of four songs from 2004 all the way to 2015 that influenced my musical interest and was very enjoyable for me to sing with my producer Ivan Reyes. I want this to be my debut track release to start off a hopefully very successful music career.

Check out Anand's amazing "Throwback Covers" Playlist!

How did you get involved in the circuit?

Not really in the dance circuit, but the acappella circuit was something I was very involved in through UC Berkeley Dil Se. We won Anahat, my first semester freshman year in Fall 2011, and also placed third at ICCA quarter finals in Spring 2012. Additionally, we traveled to various venues and colleges to perform for events such as USC's Mehfil and UC Davis's Hellacapella.

What has been your favorite moment so far?

My favorite moment was definitely recording and listening to my first ever recorded song "Kitni Baatein". The song had a special meaning for me because it was the first Bollywood song that I knew how to sing. I also wanted to sing it as my audition song for Dil Se, but ended up going with a different song. It was really nice listening to people's reactions. As they heard the song, a lot of people had positive feedback and gave me motivation to keep going and producing more songs. My producer in Chennai, Saikumar Prabhakaran, did an amazing job editing and bringing out the best vocals in me, which helped it turn out well.

Please list 3 fun facts about you.

I have seen Lebron James in real life (standing 2 feet away from me).
I have sung in front of Hariharan and gotten good feedback about singing from him.
I auditioned for the Voice in 2014 in Denver, Colorado.