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!!!
1 comment:
Hi Guruprasanna,
Listened to the whole concert over phone. I myself was very tensed and anxious from the very beginning of the concert. It was really heartening to hear claps after the whole RTP, that too for such extended duration. This was the first time I heard someone whistle in appreciation to a Carnatic Classical Music concert. My heartiest congrats on making it a grand success. The tani, as you pointed out was really special, covering all the items in 15 avarthas. Congrats once again on the grand success of the concert.
Post a Comment