Biography

Tiruchirapalli Krishnaswamy Ramamoorthy (1922 – 17 April 2013), known as T. K. Ramamoorthy (Tamil: டி. கே. ராமமூர்த்தி), was a popular South Indian Tamil music composer and violinist. Ramamoorthy was born in Tiruchirapalli into a family that was very much musically inclined. Both his father, Krishnaswamy Pillai, and grandfather, Malaikottai Govindasamy Pillai, were well known violinists in Tiruchirapalli. Ramamoorthy gave several stage performances along with his father in his childhood. C. R. Subburaman noted the young boy's talent and hired him as a violinist for HMV when he was only fourteen years old. Ramamoorthy in 1940's worked in Saraswathi Stores where AVM Studo's boss, Avichi Meiyappa Chettiar, was a partner – which lead him to play the violin for AVM's music composer, R. Sudarsanam, in some films. By the late 1940s C. R. Subburaman was a rising star in the South Indian film music world, and Ramamoorthy rejoined him as one of his violinists in his musical troupe. There, he met violinist and composer T. G. Lingappa, as well as M. S. Viswanathan, with whom he became a partner in later years.

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