Medley of sounds

Grammy and Padma Shri winning

played the Mohan Veena, a hybrid slide guitar, which has been created by him. “Bangalore is a happening City and I am pleased to be performing here. Thank you so much for sacrificing 200 television channels and coming for my concert,” joked the musician to the audience. “The beauty of Indian music is that we never rehearse what we are going to play,” he smiled.

Suma and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt played a beautiful raga, which is known as Dharmavathi in Carnatic and Madhuvanthi in Hindustani music. It was a delightful jugalbandhi, which lasted for over an hour with different instrument players joining the two musicians at regular intervals. The duo was accompanied by Anantha Krishna Sharma on mridangam, Ravindra Yavagal on tabla, Narayan Murthy S M on ghatam, Guru Prasanna on khanjira and Arul Kumar on drums.

“I have played with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt before, and it’s always wonderful to play with him,” Suma told Metrolife. “A jugalbandhi should be done only if there is a comfort level between the artistes involved.” She said further, “The audience’s reaction to the concert was just fantastic. They really enjoyed the sounds of two different strings. Though it’s a bit difficult to adjust two shrutis (pitches), it was nice to see that our shrutis matched really well.”

The blend of Hindustani and Carnatic music was indeed enjoyed by people of all age groups present at the concert. “Our main aim was to reach out to a younger crowd. So we made it interesting by involving a lot of percussive instruments,” said Suma.
 
A range of interesting performances followed after the jugalbandhi. Renowned Odissi dancer Sonal Mansingh performed for the audience. While Anuradha Vikrant performed bharatanatyam; Mithu and Roni took the stage later to present a fusion of tap dance and kathak.