Dr. Pantula Rama at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan 8 Dec 2009

Hmmm... When reviewing a concert I prefer to start with a song list. So here goes

1. Gajavadanam Ashraye - Kedaram (S)
2. Ni Chitta - Dhanyasi ( R,S)
3.Padavini - Salagabhairavi (S)
4. Karu velpulu - Kalyani (Main R,S)
5. Nennaruchara - Malavi (N,S)
6. RTP - Narayani
7. Cheli Nenetlu - Paras
8. Virutam + Ramachandru ithadu - Dwijavanti
9. Thillana - Anandabhairavi
10. Mangalam

Overall a very good to excellent concert. A detailed review coming up soon......

A Pantula Rama Concert - Waiting to unfold

Now here is a singer from Andhra who has made eyebrows go up, hands wave in excitement, intellectuals go gaga and some plebians like me go "I said so"..

As I wait for the concert to begin.. I hope for two things
1. That it begin on time with minimal speeches and
2. The balancing of all instruments is done right by the sound engineer..

The rest is upto the artist.. and my gut says Pantula Rama won't disappoint..

Blogging on my Android mobile

Wow... this is fun.. probably my posts frequency will increase now that I can blog on the go....

Review of December Concerts

The season has come.. and the time has come to revive my blog.. Planning to review some season concerts .. Its nice to have so many artists at one place at one time.. Nice event - the December Music season 2009..

My Touch HD

Well.. I have had my touch HD mobile phone for over 5 months now, and now I choose to review it. Thats typically me ;-)!!! 

   

  This is not actually a review, just a set of little pointers for people who love gadgets. My gripe with iphone was that it dint allow message forwarding or bluetooth file transfers, bad camera and video recording and was overall quite a closed system. Nevertheless it was fast and very convenient for web browsing. I,for one, had problems using it as a daily phone, which led me 

to my touch HD. 

  Being a geek with windows mobile,  I instantly took a liking to HTC touch HD. HD doesn't mean it shows video in HD or anything like that, it's just a marketing gimmick. It has a stunning resolution of 480X800 in the display which remains unparalleled hitherto thanks to its 3.8" screen. The sound quality in the unit is as good as the iphone and 5 megapixel camera makes for a wonderful multimedia phone. The internet experience in the HD is great but the iphone stills beat HD by a very small margin in this area. Bluetooth headsets work effortlessly well for music and playlist and album art management is exemplary. 

It is very sturdily built and in spite of me dropping it 5 or 6 times , it lives on.. Jai ho!!!

Srirams Talk on S. Rajam

Great talk as a tribute to S Rajam on his 91st birthday.. Apart from the regular dose of Srirams humor in the talk, a lot of the personal life of the great musical stalwart was revealed. People like me who don't have anyone in the family associated closely with any musician, in any era for that matter, find the personal lives and anecdotes of great musicians and musicologists rather interesting. It is but a boon that such generous personalities have graced the carnatic music world.
I sometimes wish I knew some musician on a first name basis...... ;-)!!! would be damn convinient to learn would'nt it???

link to the talk : http://blip.tv/file/1839017
courtesy : http://sriramv.wordpress.com/

Sumasayaka - Karnataka Kapi T.M Krishna

What a Varnam!!!!! This apparently is a Swathi Tirunal composition and at the risk of repeating myself I say 'what a composition'.. It is breathtakingly beautiful, encompassing the entire swaroopam of Karnataka Kapi comfortably. Frankly it seems more like a Mutthuswami Dikshitar composition, especially the way T.M. Krishna sings it in chowka kalam. 

His powerful resounding voice suits chowka kala krithis well. The way he uses the tempo to explore the raga while singing the krithi is wonderful. I liked his chowka kala rendition of the krithi 'Amba Neelayadakshi' very much too. However, coming back to Sumasayaka, the charanam 'manini gaathre' with the swarams are comfortably rendered by TMK. He sung the ragamalika bit of the last swara passage contaning, Kalyani, Khamas Vasantha, Mohanam magnificently , seamlessly moving from one raga to another..

Good one !!! Enjoyed this one thoroughly.. :-)

Margazhi Ragam - First and one of its kind !!!

Definitely a new concept for carnatic music, Margazhi ragam has had its share of limelight over the December season. I, for one, would question  the decision of releasing it in the last month along with the hype and excitement of the December music season in Chennai. Given that theaters usually would not run such a movie for more than three weeks, at best, it would have been better to probably release it in March/April or something like that. But thats just me..

I do not attempt to review the concert , mainly because its already done by many people and secondly the overall experience was pretty darn good. The detailed movie review(if we can call it that) can be found here http://www.rediff.com/movies/2008/dec/22review-margazh-ragam.htm .

What does peeve me a little bit is  ' Is there enough value added , in adding admittedly a great video(with lights, camera angles, split screens etc) for the Carnatic music concert?'. Would a carnatic music lover be much bothered with how the concert looks as long as the music is pristine? My two cents, I have taken the last seat tickets in a lot of concerts, hardly being able to see the artist, and enjoyed them a lot... So , for me, No!!! Seeing the artist comes pretty low in the list.

Having said that , a theatre guarantees you a good well balanced audio system largely missing in many sabhas, where sometimes mridangam is too loud,violin is too loud, audio of main singer is choppy and sometimes the mike and speaker systems are of sheer low quality . Not to mention the comfortable seats and decent restrooms in theaters.  So , good audio quality , being able to see the 'dialogues' the main artist has with the accompanist (via gestures etc), and PC Sreerams stunning camera work definitely does earn some brownie points !! :-)

So I guess, to each his own!!! Only time will tell how much this format succeeds...

Sayonara!!!

Sanjay Subrahmanyan - Desh RTP breathtaking

Sanjay Subrahmanyan

Parthasarthy Swamy Sabha

28/12/08

1) Varnam-Ninnukori- kannada

2) Enduveruga nidu - darbar

3) Niravadhisukhada- Ravichandrika( Wonderful alapana,enticing neraval at "mamava margatha", W swarams)

4) sri satyanranayanm- subhapntuvarali ( brief alapna, vilamba kala, very well rendered in a pristine voice today)

5) Arakum adganda neeli - Begada( swarams)

6) Bhairavi ( Out of the world alapana.... Well rounded and innovative.. good use of brigas , presenting a well explored expansive Bhairavi...)

Aaro Ivar yaaaro yenna pero ariyene ( neraval at " chandrabimba mukha malaraale, yennai thaane paakuraar oru kaale ) and wonderful swarams.. +thani

7) RTP - Desh

( Outstanding alapana .. Transversed through 2 Octaves... Great mindblowing Thanam....Pallavi "Gurupara kumara guha tulsi, parvati sivabalane" Adi

Swarams - Desh, Hamsanandini, Varamu

Almost 1hr RTP

8) Thukkudas and Mangalam

Review

Well , I had to take a break from the routine life of Bombay to come and enjoy some concerts in the music season and I must say this concert stood its ground pretty well..

I think it was dicy to sing darbar and kannada so close to each other right in the beginning of the concert, but it may just be me!!! The magnificience of the concert began at the Ravichandrika alapana. Personally I expected Ma kelara but the Niravadhi sukada rendidtion was great.. special mention must go to the accompanist Nagai Muralidharan for complementing Sanjay well in the neraval and  swara rendition..

My concert list includes some comments about the other krithis which were aptly rendered building up well to the Bhairavi krithi .. again surprising me with aaro ivar aaro krithi. Expected Upacharamu or Raksabettare or a heavier krithi in general.. Nevertheless the neraval was great , capturing the mood of the ramanataka krithi accurately.. I have lately started expecting a much higher quality of music from Sanjay than other musicians!!! 

Now , getting to the solitaire on the ring, Desh RTP was a masterpiece. The only other time I heard any thing close to that was 4 or 5 years back in Krishna Gana sabha , TN Seshagopalan concert with a Desh RTP, which too was wonderfully rendered. 

The alapana was built up very well, using brigas and long sangathis (nadaswaram bani as referred to by some) adding to he grandiose of the raga. The thanam was great almost 20 minutes in duration. He used the regular 'ananda thanam' during the thanam rendition which was quite endearing... Sanjay seemed to be at atmost ease in sing the RTP for an our or so in a raga like Desh , which in itself is quite an achievement for any artist..

So thats about it.. In short quite a concert.. consider myself fortunate !!!

Until later .. ciao

Sathyam shivam scandalam!!!!

Okay!! I know I'm late in initiating the Sathyam fiasco topic.. 

But PWC just accepted that they screwed up by accepting fudged documents from Sathyam without verification. This of course does not absolve them of responsibility, but one thinks - what were these guys thinking? How did they plan to get away with a fraud of such gargantuan proportions? Apart from the initial shock felt by all of us, I wonder how the three man team is so confident that they can turn the company around when they don't even have a sense of how much money they actually have? Government seems reluctant to push money into the company , without which its doubtful that Sathyam would be able to pay even the salaries of 53,000 employees.. Some aimless musings on my part I guess..

Feel free to share your opinions on this..

till the GOD bless Sathyam!!!

Happy Pongal 2009

Hello people! 

I had decided that I would finally make this blog operational as a new year resolution.  Finally decided Pongal would be a nice time to start. 

May this Pongal festival bring  a lot of  joy, prosperity, wealth and health to you and all your loved ones.

Planning to review some good books, movies and carnatic concerts of music season 2009 soon.

love to all..