If you are a music rasika, you would have noticed that the city’s famed December season has now begun to roll in November.
So if you were attending the opening evening of Carnatica’s annual music fest on Friday evening at the Narada Gana Sabha hall in Alwarpet, this Novermber fest did look like a ‘season’ event.
The auditorium was fairly packed, the rasikas were abuzz, the corporates had their execs and their banners all around and the greats launched the kutcherist.
Dr Balamuralikrishna had with him mridangam vidwan Umayalpuram Sivaraman and once the formal launch which had as chief guest Jennifer A Mcintyre, US Consul General at the Madras consulate was done with, there was a rush for seats in the hall.
A happy evening.
Lakshmi Devnath was also a happy woman this evening. She got her new picture book on the late Carnatic vocalist Madurai Mani Iyer released formally on stage. This is the maestro’s centenary year. Lakshmi has published a few books on music greats in this series besides writing books on the Alwars and the Vedic age.
The Carnatica fest has some interesting combo concerts lined up – the one on Saturday coupled two great artistes, Ravi Kiran, the chitra vina artiste with Ronu Majumdar, flutist. The shows are ticketed.
But for those whom food comes before music, the Woodlands restaurant flaunting the sabha auditorium was still the first place to check out.
Masala dosa, kichiddi, sambar vadai and coffee.
