Monday, September 29, 2008

Sparkling Simhanandana

Its time to write about the unique experience and an opportunity I had to play for Simhanandana Tala, one of the longest talas in the Astothara Shata Talas. It was a special RTP concert in Simhanandana tala sung by a very young but highly talented vocalist of Karnataka, Vinay Sharva, disciple of Vidwan S Shankar. The program was aptly under the banner of Percussive Arts Centre, which has been serving the Tala and Laya field for over 25 years.

He was accompanied by Charulatha Ramanujam on the violin and My Guruji, Shivu sir on the Mridangam and myself. I was obviously excited about the whole stuff as I had an opportunity to be part of the program and to play an active role. We had put in a lot of effort in rehersing this and we all dearly wanted the program to be a success.

There were close to 1500 people in the auditorium with some highly learned and accomplished artists witnessing the program.  Vinay started the program with the traditional Shahana Varnam, followed by a Ganesha kriti in Begade. After that, there was a kriti in kalyani, pankaja lochana. We had some sort of problems with the microphone initially as the feedback speakers were not of high quality. But, we just thought not to get bothered with all that.  There was also a brief outage in power which for a time being interrupted the program. 

The RTP was in the raga Todi. Vinay sang both raga and tana extremely well with all the necessary sancharas, and Charulatha madam giving fitting replies to all. He then explained the technicalities of the tala and the structure of pallavi using a powerpoint presentation. He then started the pallavi and he was at his ease all through the rendition be it Trikala, pratiloma, neraval, swara prasthara or for the Tani avarthana. It just shows the amount of concentration levels Vinay has and coming good on big stages. Shivu sir's contribution to the planning of the pallavi, the intricacies in each of the items such as neraval, swara prasthara, is beyond words!!!

The tani avarthana was exactly for 15 avarthanams. The genius thoughts of shivu sir just flowed in planning the tani avarthana. There were chaturasra, mishra and thrishra rounds which followed with a unique 30 akshara koraippu followed with a nadai and urutu round and to round it off, a mohara in a single avarthana and muktaya the entire cycle. 

After the pallavi ended, people just rose out of their seats and there was a standing ovation for us. It was quite an experience for me. 

Truly an outstanding concert and I would say, for the effort we had put in for the program, we tasted success on the big day!!! 

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A concert to remember !!!

Thought, I would share my experience of playing with Balamurali sir. I had performed with him in a private concert some 6 months back. But, this time, it was a different venue, different ambience. 

I had the privilege of accompanying him in the biggest Ganesha festival of Bangalore, Vidyaranya Yuvaka Sangha at APS grounds. My co-artists were, HKV and Arjun Kumar.  There were around 10k people witnessing the program and eagerly waiting for Balamurali sir to sing. 

He started off with his composition "gam ganapathe" in the raga "ganapathi" which has only 3 swaras,  sa, ga & pa. He sang a composition which he told sounds similar to a varnam in the raga karaharapriya and he told that he was singing it for the first time. 

It was totally a different experience accompanying him as you need to be constantly listening to what he is singing as there will be lots of nuances in it and most of the time as an artist, you would not know the composition. 

It was more of listening and soft accompanyment for the whole concert. Kumar sir showed all his experience in accompanying to such music and compositions. I was just following him as a shadow through out. 

The main composition of the day was in the raga Arabhi - "Mahadeva suta", which Balamurali sir sang elaborately and the swara prasthara was in thisthayi, typical of Balamurali sir. HKV sir matched him on all occassions. 

The tani rounds was the time I had to make sure I matched Kumar sir stroke to stroke. There were 2 brisk rounds in chaturasra nadai and followed by crisp koraippu. Balamurali sir was very supportive and appreciative on stage. 

After the concert, which lasted for more than 2hrs, he came to me and told "You play very well" with his deep voice which is still reverberating in my ears. He blessed me after that and we all started to move away from the huge crowd. 

One dissapointing thing happend though after the concert was, the organizers forgot to get the names of the accompanying artists and did not even mention our names. And above all, he expected us to give the names when announcing !!!