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.

IN SILICON VALLEY

We were in California last week for a concert for "Lotus" in Sunnyvale on June 21st, and a five-day workshop on Dikshitar kritis in Fremont from June 23rd through 27th. The response, warmth of the people and the enthusiasm was quite overwhelming. It was a pleasure to play with Sri Sriram Brahmanandam, a member of the illustrious Lalgudi family, and a senior mridangam artist in the Bay Area, . It was nice to interact with learned rasikas and some veena players of the area after the concert.

HINDUSTANI RAGAS ON THE CARNATIC VEENA

Quite sometime back we recorded on the veena short alapanas of 18 Hindustani Ragas for a company called Sofia Softwares Limited. They wanted us to make it as brief as we could, and "as leisurely and slow paced as possible." Whether they had in mind some music to go with sipping chamomile tea while reflecting the events of the day, we are not sure. But we thought we could upload it on our podcast (the pink box above) for web listeners. The entire recording has been uploaded in the three parts, titled Hindustani Ragas - 1, 2 and 3. The list of ragas is given below:

1. Darbari Kanada

2. Puriya Dhanasri

3. Kalavati

4. Malkauns

5. Bhatiyar

6. Bhimpalas

7. Bairagi Bhairav

8. Behag

9. Shivaranjani

10.Desh

11.Bhairav

12.Abhogi Kanada

13.Suddha Sarang

14.Durga

15.Gavathi

16.Madhuvanti

17.Bagesri

18.Bhairavi

RAMA NAVAMI CONCERT

On April 13, 2008, Chitrai Thirunal and First Day of the Sarvadhari Tamil New Year, we played a concert for the Rama Navami Series organized by Alwarpet Anjaneya Temple, Chennai. The Chandanam Alankaram for Lord Anjaneya on that day was quite a delight, and the stage was so set that we could see the Lord as we played. We were also happy to play with our childhood friend Calcutta Sundar on the mridangam after a very long time.

MAHASHIVARATHRI AKHANDAM

Naadabrahmam Music Journal conducted Mahashivarathri Akhandam at Sri Karpaga Vinayakar Temple in RA Puram, Chennai. Performing in the this temple is always special for us because when we migrated to Chennai from Kolkata, our first place of stay was the house adjacent to this Temple. It is a quaint, beautiful, well maintained temple in a quiet residential locality.

Naadabrahmam must be congratulated for putting together this Special Akhandam from 6 PM to 6 AM through the Mahashivarathri night of March 6th. Their monthly magazine called Naadabrahmam is very informative, carrying useful articles pertaining to Carnatic Music with both literary and philosophical import. Their official website is http://www.naadhabrahmam.com/.

OUR GURU'S 80TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY

Our concert on December 16, 2007 for the Margazhi fest of the Chennai Sabha Naada Inbam was of special importance since it happened to be the 80th Birth Anniversary of our Guru Late A. Anantharama Iyer. We reproduce below in part, the speech that we delivered before we concluded the concert.

"Today happens to be the 80th Birth anniversary of our Guru Vainika Vidwan Late Anantharama Iyer. Our Guru belonged to the unbroken lineage of the sishya parampara of Nadajyoti Muthuswamy Dikshitar. Our guru's father, Brahmasri Ananthakrishna Iyer who learnt directly from Ambi Dikshitar, the great grand nephew of Muthuswamy Dikshitar, founded the school Sri Guruguha Gana Vidyalaya in Calcutta to which we belong. Though it goes without saying that our Guru had a great repertoire of Dikshitar krithis, he was extremely catholic. I remember he used to say, if you want to play Sahana elaborately, Giripai would be the most appropriate krithi. He also believed that if the duration of a concert was more than 2 hours, be it vocal or instrumental, one should include a pallavi. in fact when we moved to Chennai, he was quick to suggest that we should go to the great Vidvan Chingleput Ranganathan sir to learn about the scientific approach to pallavis. We are extremely thankful to Ranganathan sir for having taken us in his fold.

If we are able to move our fingers on the veena fretboard today, it is only due to the painstaking efforts of our beloved Gurus Anantharama Iyer and his sister Smt Champakavalli, both of whom are not with us today. Our heartfelt gratitude to Sangeetha Kalanidhi Shri Vellore Ramabhadran sir for having agreed to accompany us today. We are a complete mismatch to him both in terms of vidwath and stature, yet it is indeed very gracious of him to accept to play for us. Last but not the least, we would like to thank Smt Jaya of Naada Inbam for having given us this opportunity, and all the rasikas for having come all the way to listen to us."

Given below is the link to the review of the concert that appeared in The Hindu:
Click Here

Smt Kalpakam Swaminathan's Concert In Our House

VEENAVAADHINI Chamber Concerts

On November 3, 2007 we hosted a veena concert by senior Vidushi Smt Kalpakam Swaminathan. It was a special occasion for us as Kalpakam Mami is a disciple of our Parama Guru Brahmasri A Ananthakrishna Iyer. The focus of the concert was on Dikshitar Krithis.

We thank the internet forum rasikas.org for organizing and coordinating the event and having us as hosts for the same. For all rasikas who happened to be present, it was definitely a concert that they would cherish in their minds and hearts for a long time to come.

Mami's accompanists for the evening were Shri L Ramakrishnan for Veena Support and Shri Tanjavur Kumar on the Mridangam.

Given below is the link to the concert on the rasikas.org forum:
Click Here

VEENA NAVARATHRI FESTIVAL

Words are not enough to describe the enthusiasm with which septuagenarian Shri Raghurama Ayyar organizes these veena-centric events one after the other. The first ‘Veena Navaratri’ festival was held in Chennai, from September 11-19. The festival was jointly organised by the Veena Foundation, New Delhi, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Narada Gana Sabha, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha, Kartik Fine Arts and Sri Tyagaraja Vidwat Samajam, Chennai.

We performed on the 16th of September. It was heartening to see the glint of happiness in Shri Raghurama Ayyar's eyes, when he remarked in his speech that he was particularly happy about the crowd attendance. As vainikas it gives us a lot of pleasure to place on record the fact that the invaluable support of rasikas is definitely one of the things that keeps us going.