HOW AR RAHMAN'S ORCHESTRA IS TUNING LIVES

Sunshine Orchestra, which imparts musical skills to under-served children for free, has started churning out professionals

- N Madhavan

As 24-year-old Anish Franklin sat down in January to record an audition that would transform his life, he was a bundle of emotions and nerves. Franklin, whose father was a driver and mother, a housewife, studied in a government school in Chennai. Though he had an aptitude for music, sang in his church choir and had learned the keyboard briefly, he never imagined pursuing a life in music. That was until 2014, when a well-wisher introduced him to the Sunshine Orchestra, the brainchild of two-time Academy Award-winning composer A.R. Rahman.

Sunshine Orchestra imparts free musical training to children from under-served socio-economic backgrounds. It was Rahman’s deep spiritualism that led to the founding of the orchestra in 2008. He firmly believes that the deepest chord that strikes every human being and dissolves all boundaries is music, which, he says, can change lives. The Sunshine Orchestra is a manifestation of that belief.

Franklin began training in the double bass, a giant stringed instrument from the violin family that is played in an upright position. "I did not choose the double bass. It chose me," he recalls. "I had neither heard nor seen the instrument before." Ten years of strenuous practice at the Sunshine Orchestra helped him play the instrument well.

In 2022, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire offered one string player from the orchestra an opportunity to do a year-long post graduate diploma in Instrument Performance at its college. Franklin applied and was selected. The excitement of being chosen by one of the world’s best-known music schools was, however, shortlived when he saw that the course fee was over ₹30 lakh. His family did not have such money. But there was hope—he was told that the college offered scholarships to deserving students, and immediately applied for one. He was asked to record and send in an audition.