All ears to beats

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) recently presented a laya sourabha percussion ensemble by Guru Smruthi Kala Kendra, led by vidwan Sreenivas Murthy. This was held as a part of the ‘Every Friday Cultural Evening Programme’ series at Yavanika, Nrupathunga Road.

Over the hour-and-a-half long performance, the guru and his disciples
successfully charmed those in the audience, most of whom had never seen a presentation like this.

It isn’t every day that music lovers get such a powerful amalgamation of percussion instruments, and for those who attended, it was a concert worth remembering.

An interesting choice of songs was performed by the ensemble.

The concert began with the varnam in raga shahanam, an interesting composition of Tiruvottiyur Tyaggaya.

Paridhana Michithe in raga bilahari was next, followed by the janami in raga reethigowla and Saraswathi roopaka in raga saraswati, a composition of G N
Balasubramaniam.

There was also a beautiful and energetic piece where each instrumentalist performed a solo, followed by all the instruments coming together in the end.

Samajavaragamana in raga hindolam came next, after which was vishweshwara in raga sindu bhairavi and of course, the much anticipated thillana in raga kapi.
The rhythm kept varying as the concert progressed and the ensemble, which had quite a few young faces, kept the audience entertained throughout.

“It was a really interesting format, especially because percussion ensembles are
not common in the City.

Each of the instruments was needed and each performer’s talent was brought out nicely,” says R Muddukrishna, who attended the concert.

The ensemble comprised of Sreenivas on mridangam and direction, his wife
vidushi Savithri on violin and vidwan B J Kiran Kumar on khanjira in the professional category, while the masters were Pruthvi on ghatam, Chaitanya on chande, Avinash on morsing, Sandesh Athreya on pakhawaj, B N Sinha on tabla and Ganesh V Murthy on kannakole.