Karaikudi Sambasiva Iyer Subramanian (born October 23, 1944) is a 9th generation veena player in the Karaikudi Veena Tradition.
He is the grandson of Karaikudi Subbarama Iyer and adoptive son of Karaikudi Sambasiva Iyer.
Karaikudi Subramanian has been graded as a 'Top-Grade artist' by All India Radio and has performed numerous radio concerts as well as live concerts at various venues around the world.
He has performed with fellow veena player Ranganayaki Rajagopalan and his sister Rajeswari Padmanabhan, both disciples of Karaikudi Sambasiva Iyer.
He has also accompanied artists such as flautist T.
Viswanathan and vocalist K.
V.
Narayanaswamy.
Furthermore, he has engaged in cross cultural performances with prominent musicians of other genres such as the Irish fiddler Martin Hayes and the Finnish composer Eero Hämeenniemi.Subramanian later turned his focus to education, exploring ways to make music accessible to everyone regardless of their background.
In 1989, he founded the institute 'Brhaddhvani – Research and Training Centre for Musics of the World' in Chennai.
Few years later, as a result of his vigorous training with Karaikudi Sambasiva Iyer and his own research at Wesleyan University and later at Brhaddhvani, he developed a pedagogic system of music learning called 'Correlated Objective Music Education and Training' (COMET).