A couple of dazzling Concerts

Bay Area residents were treated to a couple of dazzling Carnatic music concerts over the last month. There were several other Indian Classical / Light Music concerts in the Bay Area in this period. However, these were the two that I attended.

The first was a concert by Sanjay Subrahmanyan on September 28th at newly constructed Livermore Temple Lakkireddy auditorium. In fact, Sanjay's was the inaugural concert in this 700-seat auditorium. Sanjay's popularity among rasikAs was apparent as this concert was sold out! Sanjay was accompanied on the violin by S. Varadarajan and on the mridangam by Neyveli Venkatesh. Sanjay started the kutchErI with the bEgaDa varNam. This was followed by the Thyagaraja kritI "srI gaNapathini" in sowrAshtram. Sanjay then sang an exquisite pUrvi kalyANi alApanaI. In his previous concert in the Bay Area, I had mentioned how Sanjay held the gAndhAra swaram in kalyAni for over a minute without pausing to breathe.  This time he accomplished the same feat while rendering the pUrvi kalyANi alApanaI. This time, however, no one clapped in the middle! Sanjay sang the Ramalinga Swamigal composition "appA nAn vEnduthal". He performed a neraval around "tappEdu nAn seyinum nI poruttal vEnDum". 
As is customary with Sanjay, he follows a heavy piece with a quick, light song. This time, he sang the Swaati TirunaaL composition "vandE sadhaa padmanAbham" in navarasa kAnnaDa. He followed this with a bhairavI alApanaI and the compositiion "mahA tripurasundarI". The short piece that followed this time was "nanda gOpAla mukunda gOkula" in yamunA kalyANi. The central composition of the kutchErI was Pooci Sreenivasa Aiyangar's "saraguna pAlimpa samayamurA" in kEdAra gowLai, which included an intricate thaniAvarthanam by Neyveli Venkatesh. I noticed people (sitting in the front row) walking out of the concert during the thaniAvarthanam. This was not the customary (sic!) bio-break while the percussionist played. They had collected their bags and were leaving. I felt like rushing out and telling them, "The best is yet to come".

This time, the short piece was "ozhukkam uyirinum ombapadUm" in kuntAla varALi composed by Tiruvalluvar. At this stage, Sanjay had already sung songs in Telugu, Tamil, Sanskrit and Malayalam. Sanjay performed a divine RTP in cArukEshi next. The pallavi was, "ellAm sivan seyal illaI. kavalaI inrI iruppAi manamE". He performed the rAgamAlikA while singing the pallavi (normally, I have heard it done during the swaraprasthAram). He included kalyAni, naLinakAnti, varALi, sahAnA and hamsAnandI in the rAgamAlikA. He followed this with a Sanskrit Shloka. At the end of this song he announced, "This Sholka was composed by a Sanskrit student some 10 years ago - who happens to be none other than my sister. She happens to be living in the Bay Area right now." The audience wanted to acknowledge her. Aarthi Natarajan stood up to receive an ovation. I notice that her spouse, Bala, tweeted this fact.

Sanjay sang as many as six tukkada's after this including, Purandara Dasa's "lAlisidaLu magana"in dEsh; Doraiswami Kavi's "solla solla" in behAg; Bharatiyaar's "ninnaiyE rathi inru ninaikirEn" in bAgeshreE; Gopalakrishna Bharati's "chidambaram pOgAmal" in chencuruttI; Bharati Dasan's "kundrin meedhu nindru kandEn" in kamAs; Muthiah Bhagavatar's "kAlino harismarana" in kApI. Finally, after almost four hours, he concluded the concert with a thillAna in sindhu bhairavI.

The second concert was by Bombay Jayashri on Saturday, October 26th at the San Jose Center For Performing Arts in Downtown San Jose. Jayashri was accompanied on the violin by HN Bhaskar, on the mridangam by P Satish Kumar and on the ghatam by Giridhar Udupa. The fact that Jayashri was an Oscar Award nominee, was probably a factor in having a "mainstream" auditorium for a Carnatic Music concert. Interestingly, the only sections that were sold out were the higher price tickets (for $150 and $50). The concert started 15 minutes late - perhaps due to the fact that there was still a long line at the "Will Call" window with the stragglers traipsing their way in. The first thing I noticed when the curtain raised was that there were two tamburAs. It is much harder for a singer to maintain her pitch against both instruments. Jayashri began her concert with the Narayana Theerthar composition, "jaya jaya swAmi" in nAtai. This was followed by a short, Thyagaraja kritI "teliyalEru rAma" in dhEnukaa. 

Next, Jayashri sang an alApanai in mOhanam. She brought in traces of Hindustani bhOpAli while rendering the alApanai. It was beautifully done. She sang another Thyagaraja kritI "nanu pAlimpa". The central composition of the kutchErI was Thyagaraja's "pakkala nilabaDi" in karaharapriya. She performed a neraval here around, "manasuna dalaci mE maraci". The 15+ minute thaniAvarthanam that followed was a treat. Satish Kumar and Giridhar Udupa delivered a very well orchestrated performance. Before the start of the thaniAvartanam, you could see that Satish Kumar was gesturing to desperately trying to catch the attention of the stage support folks. Then Jayashri announced, "Could you turn down the AirCon. It is freezing here." 

When Jayashri started singing an alApanai in yaman kalyAni, I assumed that she was singing a short piece. In fact, this turned out to be her RTP! The pallavi was, "bAla gOpAla sumadhura leelA. vEnu gAna lOla". Jayashri also performed the rAgamAlikA while singing the pallavi. She included cArukEshi, madhyamAvati and chencuruttI. She sang the Santhana Lakshmi stotram,"Aie khAga vAhini mohinI chakrinI rAga vivardhini gnanamayE" next. This was followed by a viruttam in kApi followed by the Purandara Dasa kritI "jagadO dhAranA". Jayashri concluded her concert with the Lalgudi G. Jayaraman thillAna in pahAdi.

Classical Concert by Ananya Ashok

In November 2011, Hemmige and Subhapriya Srivatsan gave a lecture on, "The sense of proportion in Concerts" as part of the VivRti 2011 Fall Festival. They talked about the importance of:

• appropriate rAgam selection
• using songs from different languages
• effective utilization of the percussionists
• timing the various pieces appropriately
• etc.

in order to keep the audience enthralled and engaged for 3+ hours in a concert. They Bay Area is indeed fortunate to have opportunities for such lectures, concerts and "music seasons" (a topic for a future blog post).

Ananya Ashok had this "sense of proportion" in a near perfect Carnatic vocal concert on Saturday, March 31st at the Divine Science Community Center in San Jose. Ananya was ably accompanied by Siva Ramamurthi (student of Delhi P. Sundararajan) on the violin, Vignesh Venkataraman on the mridangam and Ganesh Ramnarayan on the kanjira. Ananya began her concert with the shankarAbharaNam varNam, chalamElA. She followed this with Puliyur Doraisamy Iyengar's Sankrit kritI, sarasIruhAsana priyE in nAtAi. She did an efficient swara kalpanA at the conclusion of this song. Ananya then sang an elaborate AlApanA in madhyamAvatI followed by the Thyagaraja kritI deva srI tapastheertha - which is also a Lalgudi pancharatnam. Before embarking on her major piece, Ananya sang a melodious, short Annamacharya kritI in hamIr kalyANi, yEmana vachUnU.

Ananya chose bhaIravI for her major piece - an excellent choice given the wide scope for improvisation in this rAgam. She sang the popular Dixitar kritI bAlagOpAla and did a niraval on the anupallavI, "nIla nIrada sharIra dhIratara". This was followed by a 20-minute thaniAvathanam - executed very well by Vignesh and Ganesh. She followed this with a very fast paced Mysore Vasudevacharya composition paripAhi mAm shrI raghupatE. This perfectly led up to the RTP in shaNmukapriyA. The pallavI that she sang was "sAma gAna lOlE srI bAIE sangIta rasika priyE". In the kalpanaswAras she sang rAgamAlika swarAs in kAnaDA, hamsAnandi, naLinakAnti and kalyANavasantA.

Ananya concluded with a Tamil song thAyum Anavare in pilu and finally Lalgudi Jayaraman's mAnD tillAnA.

While a majority of the credit for this excellent concert must go to Ananya - for her sadhakam, kudos to her guru Anuradha Sridhar. Earlier in the day, I was at Badarikashram for a Ramanavami program by the students of Bay Area music teachers. Rohan and Madhuri, were singing along with Srilaxmi Kolavenu's other students (you can watch them sing rAmachandram bhAvayAmi in vasantaa and sing shObillu sapthaswara in jaganmOhini). Before Srilaxmi's students went on stage, there was a young artiste (probably not more than 18 years old) giving a solo performance (along with a young violin and mridangam player). I don't know their names, but she sang a mesmerizing AlApanA in pUrvi kalyANi and the Dixitar kritI gnanamOsagarAdha. She followed this with a melodious jAnaki ramaNa in kApi. It was later that I learned that the young artiste is a student of Anuradha Sridhar. Of course, singing with such control and have such an imposing stage presence at such a young age takes a lot of sadhakam. It also takes a dedicated guru. It is not surprising that Anuradha Sridhar has won numerous awards and accolades - including "Best Teacher in North America" at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival.

An Auditory Feast

Denizens of the Bay Area were treated to an Auditory Feast last Saturday morning (October 8th) when Ananya Ashok (student of Anuradha Sridhar) gave a Carnatic Vocal concert at Sivamani mama's house in Sunnyvale. Due to a soccer commitment, I was a bit late in getting there. She was singing sarasIruhAsana priyE in nAtAi as I reached. Even as I was settling down, I was very impressed by the ensemble of Lakshmi Balasubramanya on the violin and Vignesh Venkatraman (student of Umayalpuram Sivaraman) on the mridangam. There must have been a varnam before this. Could someone who was at the concert post the details on the varnam as a comment to this blog.

Ananya followed this with a shlOkam in Ananda-bhaIravi and the Dixitar kriti kamalAmbA. She then sang a beautiful alApanA in valaji and the Harikesa Muthiah Bhagavatar kriti jAlandharA supeetha. Valaji is a simple rAgam with Sa Ga Pa Dha Ni swarAs. Ananya chose to perform an exquisite neraval around "bhavarOga nivArinE, bhaktajana paripAlinE".

As this concert was part of the navarAtrI series, Ananya sang a song on dEvi, shrI chakrarAja simhAsanEshwari. This is a raagamalika in shenjuruTTI, punnagavaraLi, naadanaamakriyaa and sindhu bhairavi.

After this short piece, Ananya sang an alApanA in hEmavatI. Being a mElakarthA rAgA, hEmavatI has a lot of scope for being selected as the major item in a concert. Ananya did justice to this and sang Dixitar's srI kAntImatIm. It included a swara kalpanA, which was followed by a thaniAvarthanam.

Ananya concluded by singing three short numbers - Shyama Shastri's kanaka shaila in punnagavaraLi, Dixitar's annapoornE vishAlAskI in sAmA and Lalgudi Jayaraman's Thillana in mAnd.

Short of having a rAgam-thAnam-pallavI, this was a complete concert. Perhaps she did not include an RTP since she was given just two hours.

I would have liked her to sing a magaLam at the end of her concert. Again, it is likely that she did not include it because this was not the final concert of the day.

I certainly look forward to listening to additional concerts by Ananya. She has immense potential to reach the heights of other eminent students of the Lalgudi bAni.