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Harmonium : Dr Ravindra Katoti
Harmonium Support : Chirag (16 year old disciple of Ravindra)
Tabla : Pt Udayraj Karpur
Concert/Day : 3 hours and 10 minutes / Saturday
Coolkarni , the karanakartha for rasayana when he started championing the 1st of our concerts in 2006 at westmambalam has gone quite a long way . We must have crosssed possibly 20 + of concerts and it is always a pleasure to see the kind of planning of how one coolkarni along with few unheard brilliant artists can bring a giant leap for rest of the rasikas .
This was a special occassion for coolkarni , when cool's son Kedar finished 10th standard and was asked what he wants as a treat , young kedar said I would like to have a concert organized . We celebrate generations of Maharajapuram parampara all the way from vishwanatha Iyer to santhanam to Ramachandran/Srinivasan and also the fourth generation Ganesh vishwanathan.
We also have a rasika parampara of 3 generations : shri Rao (Cool's dad forgot his full name)- Sashi kulkarni - Kedar bringing a rare blend of rasikatvam , which is certainly not there with many of us over 3 generations. Special mention to Kedar who asks his dad and mom a concert instead of asking for a playstation console . Bless Koolkarni and also the host shyam (mantra) with his dad kalyanasundaram and shyam's two kids as a host it was a really rare treat and there was also 3 generations of rasikatvam very evident with Shyam's family.
Let us move on to the concert
Hindustani and Harmonium , quite a combination to me personally , it is kind of brinjal and Bittergourd which many like , but quite strangely I found no traces of any inclination to like and to hear this combination of Hindustani and Harmonium was a kind of challenge. I did not even know that one can give a full length harmonium concert without collaboration of either vocal or any other instrument , till this concert was organized.
Let us really move on to the concert
I am used to see in general a harmonium artist where he/she fairly pumps the bellows quite reqularly with one hand and plays the keys with another hand . But Ravindra had quite an intense technique he did not pump the bellow as frequently as what one generally notices and that meant there was lot of optimization in his playing technique and that certainly provided a usually longer cycle of purity of notes and more sustenance . He played only with mostly 3 fingers of his right hand , the three fingers where we place on the l k and j letters of the keyboard (ring, middle and pointing finger), but with a minimal bellow with his left hand , it was a gayaki style of vocal where the sangathis/notes came just from his three fingers.
