Fiddling Monks (Ganesh Kumaresh) @ RSM, 9 may 2013

[badari]

A great sprited concert by the brothers... and to wrap it up a spritied tani

ritigaula Dhanyasi and Kalyani stole the show....

01 arabhi varNa
02 gauLa - praNamAmyaham gauri sutam
03 English tune- hamsadhwani
04 rItigaULa - nAn Enu mADideno venkaTEshA P.dasa
05 dhanyAsi - rAmAbhi rAma
06 kalyani -shana grahabedha - eta vunara - kAnaDa , ahir bhairav, ranjani, janaranjani ?? --- tani
07 gOvinda bolo gopala bolo - sindhubhairavi
08 tillana - by lgj - bahudari
09 bhagyAda lakshmi bAramma - madhyamAvathi
10 harivarasanam - nagumomu galavani (played as a medley)


http://arohanaavarohana.blogspot.in/201 ... rasad.html

[kssr]

No raagapravaaham?! ie. only ragas without songs or sahitya. That kind of innovation is their favourite.

No doubt they are both masters of the instrument.

[mohan]

Is that an Rhythm pad I see photo? In fact, I see a lot of gadgets on stage , eg iPad, laptop, etc.!

[badari]

@ Mohan... nice sharp eyes...

all your guesses are correct..

[mahavishnu]

Mohan: They have used a macbook for a long time. I think the controls for the processing/amplification units that their instruments run through are on it.
They might run their tanpura through it as well. Not quite sure what the iPad does though...

The person playing the drumpad is Sri Pramath Kiran, who plays a number of percussion instruments including morsing.

Badari: do yo have any more details on the "English tune" in hamsadwani. I am curious as to what that might be.

[Sindhuja]

The "English tune" I'm guessing is what they also played last week at Gateshead, UK. It was a lovely composition by themselves - a ragapravaham, which I learnt they have also played earlier with Jayanthi Kumaresh in their trio concerts. We (or at least I) don't normally take Hamsadhwani seriously, but this composition was very enjoyable. And yes, it is very apt to call it an "English" tune since it sounded very Western - which was great since Hamsadhwani lends itself well to it. I liked it even better than "Adbhuta", their other Hamsadhwani piece in an album released many years ago.

[mahavishnu]

Nice to know, Sindhuja. Is there a recording of this hamsadhwani piece available somewhere?

[PRCM]

The Hamsadhwani piece is indeed Ragapravaham...

The link to the recording is

http://www.sangeethamshare.org/tvg/UPLO ... Violin-NP/

This is the recording of National Programme of Music ...

I was fortunate enough to attend this concert. It was as usual a great spirited power packed performace by the duo...

[PRCM]

Bahudari Thillana is the brothers' own composition

[Shyamala Rangarajan]

The way the brothers play the Ragamalika Kalpanaswarams is very unique and interesting....

For example, if they play Ragamalika Kalpnaswarams in Kalyani, first raga they take up starts with the swara R2 (Rishabam of Kalyani), second raga starts with G3 (Gandharam of Kalyani), third one M2 (Madhyamam of Kalyanani) and so on...

They choose the ragams for Kalpanaswarams based on this pattern...

Their composition Adbudha (Hamsadhwani) follows this pattern.

They have been doing this from the late 80s...

Another interesting feature that I noticed in their recent concerts is, both the brothers playing the swarams together using Vaadhi Samwadhi notes and asking the percussionists to repeat the pattern.