Vocal : Abhishek Raghuram
Violin : H K Venkatram
Mrudangam : Arjun Kumar
List:
01. chalamEla jEsi ( varNam) – nAtakurinji – Rangaswamy Nattuvanar ( O )
02. mApAla velasi – asAvEri – Thyagaraja
03. nanu brOva rAdA – janaranjani – Shyama Sasthry ( A,S )
04. kalaivANi aruL purivAi – dhanyAsi – Papanasam Sivan ( S )
05. gurulEka eTuvaNTi – gowri manOhari – Thyagaraja ( A,N,S,T )
neraval & swara @ tatva bOdhana jEsi kAppADu tyAgarAjAptuDanu’
06. mAyammA yaninE -Ahiri – Thyagaraja ( O)
07. mangaLam – saurAshtram – Thyagaraja
Karnataka Fine Arts Council, formed by 10 leading ‘sabhas’ in Bangalore had their week long ‘Youth Music Festival” , Kalavanta, until saturday. Fourteen young talents competed in the festival in front of eminent judges ( MS Sheela, Malladi Suribabu, A V Anand and Krishnamurthy) and three of them were awarded on a fabulous function on the Sunday morning. Apoorva Krishna ( violin ) was selected as the best young musician, Vittal Rangan was selected as best accompaniment and N C Bharadwaj as the best percussion artist. Congratulations to the winners and look forward to seeing them in the regular circuit soon. Vittala Rangan, of course is already making a mark for himself.
Post the function, had a truncated concert by Abhishek Raghuram. at 11:40, the organisers announced that the concert will end by 1:00 pm, which left us with 100 minutes of music with Abhishek, definitely too short to do justice to his caliber and to satisfy our ‘greed’. However, in the given short span of time, he did a phenomenal job with a classy concert. He could probably have avoided the varnam, but he preferred to do a proper concert format, albeit shortened to fit the time. Varnam followed by a beautiful asaveri piece, very moving. Short alapana of janaranjani came quickly and the Shyama Sasthty kriti. He added some good rounds of kalpana swaras in two speed. Papanasam Sivan’s kalaivani arul purivai was very interesting selection. The kriti broke into fore from nowhere, full of vigour.
The main gowri manohari alapana was outstanding, which also had some clever ultra low octave singing. H K Venkatram , in his turn gave a fitting return. Guruleka etuvanti was no surprise. The early stages of the neraval was largely consisted of the ‘word play’ around kAppADu and ‘bOdhana’, which beyond certain point was a bit dull. However, he quickly recovered from that and continued more aesthetically pleasing complete line , concluding with a long very entertaining stretch. Swara largely in second speed, was a real cracker ! Brilliantly constructed and executed. Arjun Kumar continued the same with a spirited tani avartanam. Though highly enjoyed and appreciated by the audience, 15 mins of it to me it was a bit long for a shorter concert. Already over the stipulated time, he concluded the concert with an ahiri piece before mangalam. Brilliant concert.
Brain Drain 