Nov 22, 2009

A foreign ode to an Indian festival

At Music Academy, 168, TTK road,  Mylapore
From 17 - 22 November, 7.15 pm
Tickets Rs.3000, 1750, 600, 350-ground seats; Rs. 1000, 200-balcony
Available at The Music Academy, Landmark Nungambakkam and Concord Motors, No.42 Velachery Road

A congregation of living musical legends, maestros in their own compositions.
An eager audience, ready to engross themselves in a wide variety of music performances from all over the world.
A prelude to the December music festival that our metropolitan city is famous for.

This is the atmosphere created by the Friday Review group of The Hindu for the music connoisseurs of ‘namma’ Chennai. It is again that time of the year when the whole city gathers to appreciate and admire musical talents, starting with the six-day November Fest.
This festival, held at the Music Academy, was inaugurated on November 17 and will go on till November 22. Tickets have already started flowing out and every show seems to be fully booked by the previous night. And why not. The list of musicians lined up this time to captivate the crowd is tantalizing in itself. All having career backgrounds in different forms of music just adds to the lure.
“The cognoscenti of Chennai have an appetite for all genres of music and therefore we are certain this festival, which features an eclectic mix, will satisfy them,” the vice-president (Advertisement) of The Hindu, V. Kalidas, was found quoting at a press conference at Taj Coromandel on Friday.
Launching the Fest on November 17, N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, said, “In these volatile times, music is a way of building bridges across cultures and spaces. We believe our November Fest – by reaching out to different genres of music from different regions and climes – helps bring people together.”

Starting auspiciously by lighting the Kuththuvilakku....
This was then followed by a crowd-enticing performance by the sisters Ranjani and Gayatri, who are well versed in classical music. They began with a traditional Meera bhajan in Raag Kafi, moving on to the touching performance of Thevaram in Raag Sindhu Bhairavi, followed by a beautiful rendering of the evergreen Krishna Nee Begane, and ending with a well appreciated Marathi abhang.
Starting this Fest is the celebrated Abida Parveen, a Pakistani Sufiana singer, well known for her music that reflects the dominant, conscious spiritual concerns and the hidden, unconscious concerns of millions of soul seekers.
She is followed by Pandit Channulal Mishra, of the Kirana Gharana, who insinuates an eclectic and engaging stage presence combined with a sparkling rhythm sense. This versatile artiste evokes a twin strain of romance and devotion drawing his assets from music-steeped Varanasi.
The Chennai crowd is gripped by another foreign performer, James Ryan Quartet, from Australia, the following day. An international star with his commitment to precision and creativity, he has a penchant for improvisation on three instruments – tenor sax, flute and saxello.
O.S. Arun and Sanjay Abhyankar join in the celebrations on November , with the bhajans of the famed Surdas, choosing a new theme in “Sur Sagar”, evolving a creative partnership to refract the movement from the sensuous to the spiritual. Both are well known charismatic singers who have adventured in a range of genres from fusion and devotional to film music, while still firmly entrenched in the classical mode.
South Korea’s leading world music band Gong Myoung follows the next day coming to introduce Chennai to its music of distinctive moods. The young musicians integrate the past with the present to turn their medleys into a stunning performance, in a confluence of dance, drama and cinema.
This novel fiesta ends with evergreen music of the Osibisa, the popular British Afro-Rock band, formed in the late-1960s, returns to the city for the first time since 1983. Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year (2009), Osibisa continues to make its audiences go wild in criss-crossing fusions of jazz, rock, soul, Latin, African and Caribbean rhythms.

A wide variety of musicians and music lovers at the launch
A fantastic array of maestros meet here in Chennai, most of them performing for the first time here, for this spectacular event. It looks like the fête is aiming at forging a global firmament of musical experiences.

1 comment:

  1. Comments from Sir,
    Good. Did you use a lot of the brochure? Inevitable to some extent, but nicely stitched together with the rest. I hope you are going to have some arresting photographs.

    I look forward to your own take on the actual concerts / performances.

    NKR

    ReplyDelete