April music season ends :)

My weekend began with this kutchery on friday evening by Priya Sisters. Quite honestly I wasn't as impressed like last time. Probably coz I've come to like Ranjani & Gayathri duo's voice more since. Their voice is more retro and classy unlike priya sisters contemporary voice. My favourite piece of the program was palukE bangaara maayenaa set to aananda bhairavi. Plenty of new stuff, but some of those I knew were banTu reeti kOlu set to hamsanaadam and aasai mugham marandhu set to jOnpuri, apart from some tukkudas.

The main piece of the evening was pakkala nilabaDi set to kharaharapriya. And then there was this interesting piece with started with the verses sounding like jagala kuchala. Any clues anybody?

One of the hilight of this kutchery was the violinist. Sri M.A.Krishnaswamy whose style is quite along the lines of M.S.G. He is one amongst the violinists whose fingering is a pleasure to watch as much as listening to it. Just watching them one can say how pristine he is with the instrument. Very calm and composed, he never seems like studying the vocalist but nevertheless gives an impeccable followup on the violin.

Such a pleasure to watch his fingers take flight over the fingerboard effortlessly. It would just take somewhere like minimum of 5 hours of practice a day to get close to that ;) says he.

Saturday evening, it was this program titled "Divine Ensemble" - Laya Mudhra. Rather than singing aspect and such, this is more about display of aspect of layam. I am a bit averse to the nadhaswaram instrument given to its loudness. On top of it, the percussionists seem to be on an all time high. They literally banged left, right and centre. My eardrums have up after the thani-aavarthanam. Gladly at least the bhaagyaada lakshmi baaramma set to madyamavathi was at enjoyable levels. I was expecting it to be along the lines of heArtbeat and hence my disappointment. Fortunately they did play a piece which is great when played with the nadhaswaram - ninnu vinA nAmadi endu set to navarasa kannaDa. A piece that will have almost anyone listening tapping to its tune :). I did make it outside without a headache :D. Trust me, a heavy dose of percussionists on adrenaline can give you a headache.

Today evening it was Nithyashree Mahadevan. Close your eyes and listen to her rendition and you'd proly think its a little girl singing ;)). Most of the songs she sung today were quite unknown to me and my kutchery buddies. So there was just some raagam guessing going on, not me of course :D. But after a raagam aalapanai (set to bahudaari, which I realized a little later) I was humming brOva baarama and she sang the same too \:D/. Guess am not all that bad ;) as I thought. And then M.A.K. on the violin, so needless to say it was a wonderful treat.

I also ended up making some good friends this season. Somehow I don't seem to catch people of my age #-o. It was old folks last time and this time little ones :). Although a bit of a distraction given to their restlessness it was a lot of fun. Hapless mocking, leg-pullings, situation comedies and plenty of ROTFL's, requests and raagam guessing for every song. Drawing cartoons (not me of course) and putting each others names on them with funny descriptions, cooking up crazy descriptions for each letter of our names. Gosh! I am not gonna list the titles they gave me and end up damaging the little dignity I have left ;)), but they really got wacky and gave me some hearty smiles and giggles. Sure am gonna miss them all until next summer.

Overall the event was fantastic. One of its shortfalls was the limited time given to artists :(. Two and half to three hours at a sabha is fair enough but not at a free-for-all kutchery in mambalam. This place has a history of people listening to artists from dusk until dawn, believe me or not. I guess that's not practical these days. But scheduling other programs immediately after a kutchery, esp. when its an artists who can sing for long is disastrous to both the artist and the rasikaas alike. I am not sure if this new trend will change. I do hope that aspect improves next year.

No more kutcheries on the horizon for a while now :(. Which means I am against stuck with bloggers-block :).

Cheerios.