1) Cuddalore Janani - very good voice and sung with great sincerity. Very good Amritavarshini and Kambodhi Maragathavalleem.
I enjoyed the kambodhi ragam and swarams.
The swarams round was gripping too.
Special mention about the melliflous mridangam vidvan mannarkoil j balaji-avargal.
2) Ravi Kiran - ecstatic and scholarly presentation.
In the 1.5 hr slot he presented only 3 kritis.
Began with sri matrubhutham in kannada ragam with svarams for suvasita.
Then began the magnum opus - he announced that they will be presenting the 14-ragamalika kriti of dikshitar sri visvanatham.
Ravi Kiran and M Vijay on the violin took turns to elaborate alternate ragams in the 14 - which kept up the momentum and did not sag.
It was the first time that I heard Bhairavam Ragam sung - pretty interesting.
Then began a leisurely rendition of the grand kriti sri visvanatham.
And then he sang svarams for each ragam - mindboggling stuff.
First few ragams they sang in slow speed and then they took the fast tempo and sang all 14 ragams in reverse in the last round eliciting applause from the audience.
Great going and thoroughly enjoyable.
If Ravi Kiran is in this forum - may i please request him to post the bhairavam ragam details that he sang??
3) Vijayalakshmi Subramaniam - decent though I had to leave midway.
A very good dum durge in sri ranjini followed by sri bhargavi in mangala kaisiki and subramanyena in shudha dhanyasi and ananda natana prakasam in kedaram.
I think she took up purvikalyani for elaboration but had to leave as it looked like it may rain.
A very great scholar she is I am sure.
However this day she sounded lacking energy - completely understanding considering that it can be tricky singing a dikshitar exclusive concert.
Decent concert I felt and hope it made an impact in the 2nd half.
Usha Rajagopalan the veteran was the violinist and the very senior Madrimangalam Swaminathan on mridangam. Very good support.
Have 2 more months in India and hope to catch more such concerts and lap up as much as I can
PPerumal.
) this would have been a justified time to summon them!