JANA GANA MANA IN NEW YORK

Around mid-afternoon on the day of our concert in New York, a tornado alert was sounded. It was pouring heavily as we were making our way through the Lincoln tunnel to The Arch, an auditorium in busy Manhattan. We barely managed to survive the traffic and reached the venue just 5 minutes before the scheduled start. Rain stopped soon after that and the skies cleared. There were very few Indian faces in the audience; one of the Americans surprised us with his chaste Malayalam which we ended up answering in English as we did not know the language!! It was August 15th and we had planned to play Jana Gana Mana. The moment we announced that we would be playing the National Anthem of our country, everyone in the audience stood up with hands on their chest. It was wonderful. AR Balaskandan, local mridangam artist of the NYC area, and his wife Sonali, are doing excellent service to Carnatic Music by arranging Carnatic concerts in these parts. Our compliments to them.

THE SUNSHINE STATE BECKONS

Starting with a teaching camp in Tampa, the visit to the Sunshine State of Florida culminated in a concert at the Shiva Vishnu temple of South Florida in Miami. Dr. S. Ramakrishnan, the face of mridangam in Miami accompanied us. It was a sizeable crowd, almost full to capacity, and the arrangements perfect. Local carnatic artists, teachers, jazz musicians and a cello artist were amongst the audience. After the concert there was an impromptu interactive session where questions were asked about the electronic veena and we were happy to provide the answers.

GETTING MUS(EUM)ICAL IN MANHATTAN

A lovely weekend in New York, starting with a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, walking around Central Park, watching an open-air Shakesparean play in Riverside Park, watching a French Vintage car rally and listening to a live music band in the Union Square Park. A perfectly happy and no blahs summery weekend, as they say in these parts!! About the live music and the play... the element of perfection in whatever was executed was noteworthy. And in the Museum, we wanted to see if the Veena had a place in the Musical Instruments section. Sure enough it did, and this warmed our hearts. There were two veenas, one from the 1940s with ivory inlay work, and the other a more recent one. There were also some miniature Tamburas with intricate painting on them, a Kinnari veena and a Rudra Veena, and a Mayuri Veena which had the kodam shaped like a peacock. A big thanks to our dear friend Vasudha for helping with taking the pictures.