Great Experience of performing with Inventor of Mohan Veena and a Grammy Winner!
Panditji was so humble to come home the earlier day with his wife and had dinner - simple Dosas - at our house and we had gone for a short drive on to the beach side and he was feeling so bad for the effect of "Thane" strom and as he got out of our car he said, "All the best Sathya, let's make a great day tmrw evening". It was a great blessings and i was so stunned to see a person of his stature to be so simple and even more simpler was his wife Ma ji and it was one of teh best moments i had in my life time.
The day of the action i.e. December 31, 2011, appa left home early to see through all arrangements for the evening as Giri Trading Agency had decided to make a Video & Audio albums of the concert. I was very excited on the show and just tried to concentrate and practise few ragas for slow and speedy phrases as i thought of the Hindustani phrases and ones i might have to give a good response!
God was kind to me with the presence of good number of audience and i thought that was indeed the respect Chennai rasikas gave for this Maestro Mohana Veena Inventor! While doing the sound check we understood teh "Reverb" key was faulty and Pandit ji was so humble in saying, "let's play with whatever resource we have". A great learning for me and for any artist as this is the best mind set one should possess instead creating a big issue and make a scene which might bring in more and more of unpleasantness!
Thanks to my dad's idea of checking with Mr. Ranganathan, incharge of Giri Trading Agency who was captaining the the recording stream, they brought the studio mixture from Surang, As we were playing the raga aalapana the new mixture was made set and before we went on to Thanam the equipment was fixed in no time - Thanks to teh sound engineer and team! It was kind of non stop music for the next almost 1 hr 30 mts and as we finished our piece on Madhuvanti - Dharmavathi combination we realised it is time to end the concert! Panditji in all humbleness asked me what we could play to end the concert, i suggested "Vaishnava Janatho" which happend to be one of the best renditions in a Jugalbandhi concert as said by Panditji, Ms. Vaijayanthi Mala Bali and others who had attended.
I sincerely thank Eenadu to have carried an article on the Jan 02, 2012 and Dinamalr on Jan 15, 2012 and you can log on to http://reviewsonsathya.blogspot.com/ to read the reviews.
I also thank Brahma Gana Sabha for having thought of this combination of Jugalbandhi Concert and Pandit ji in particular for suggesting to do a Jugalbandhi instead of his Solo which was in first place asked for!
Let's now look forward to Giri Trading Agency to bring out the DVD & Audio CD of this concert and i just cannot wait for a long time to see the same!
Let me also take this opportunity to greet you all for a Very Happy 2012!
