Svatantra 2014!

[the_ARTery]

[the_ARTery]

[the_ARTery]

[the_ARTery]

[the_ARTery]

[the_ARTery]

Svatantra 2014 kicks off in just a few hours with Vidushi Sowmya's thematic presentation on Ramanatakam. Tune into the hi-def LIVE WEBCAST at http://theartery.in/live-webcast

[rshankar]

Will the concerts be archived??

[Ponbhairavi]

That Dr Sowmya choseto sit on the side giving the centre stage to the growing and upcoming artistes shows her magnanimity. Excellent program.Nothing was unknown but the presentation was remarkable.Arunachala kavirayar's composing ability the music the narration and the paintings. the originality lies in merging the aural and visual. all the artistes gave a nice performance.
Now an experiment.From the full program edit and cut out the commentaries the narration and the background pictures.Listen and see only the continuous rendering of music alone.One would realize how much pure music (eventhough mounted on meaningful sahithya -- let alone musical sounds) is lame as compared to the overall effect of complete enjoyment, literary,musical visual and cultural ,all component arts of an evolved civilization.
Was it music to the servoce of religion, or was it poetry,painting AND MUSIC,all arts combined flowing through the human ARTERIES to the service of moral edification or wholesome entertainment at least. Akara vadisal alone would be enough to quench the appetite, but it is far from a wholesome full dinner.
If the program was reduced by 20 mnts it would have been ideal

[priyaram78]

Enlightening program by Dr.Sowmya ! It was awesome. The explanations, the paintings, renditions by all the artistes were an aural treat. Would love to attend a concert of Sandeep narayan. Had to leave the concert in between because of my impatient son but hope to attend the same program once more. Dr.Sowmya should present more thematic presentations like this for the benefit of all rasikas. Next year would love to attend yet an another wonderful concert like this one. Kudos to the team !

[the_ARTery]

[the_ARTery]

Yes rshankar, the webcast is archived and avbl for viewing on our website www.theartery.in Pls click on Webcast Archives --> Live Concerts

[the_ARTery]

Today's webcast (Aug 14th) starts at 5.15 pm IST with Ashwath Narayanan's concert followed by Sanjeev Abhyankar at 6.30 pm. Do tune in at www.theartery.in

[rshankar]

Yes rshankar, the webcast is archived and avbl for viewing on our website http://www.theartery.in Pls click on Webcast Archives --> Live Concerts

Thank you - will do!

[the_ARTery]

#Svatantra 2014 - Concluding day - tune in to the live webcast today at 5.15pm IST - Hybrid Division band followed by "Kaveri to Kodambakkam!" http://theartery.in/live-webcast/

[the_ARTery]

All the webcasts from Svatantra 2014 have been archived at OUR WEBSITE and will be available on-demand for a limited period. Those of you who missed the four-day live treat, please do tune in!

[vasanthakokilam]

I watched "Kaveri to Kodambakkam!". Good concept and executed fairly well. The audio of the female singer high pitched voice was a bit distorted by the sound system. That is unfortunate because she is a pretty good singer. The singers on the whole did a great job, in both recreating the old classics with note perfection quite effortlessly and also later on alternating seamlessly between Thyagaraja and Ilayaraja songs in the same raga. Good try!

[ramanathan]

Some pics from the event: PLEASE CLICK HERE

[the_ARTery]

Here is The Hindu's review of the Ramanatakam presentation by Dr. Sowmya & co. at Svatantra 2014...

[malavi]

In todays Hindu review of sowmyas Ramanatakam the ragamalika Enakkunnirupadam kidaikka varamarulvai has been changed to Enakkul iruppadu.
Another critic has changeD Muthuswamy Dikshitar to Muthuswamy Bhagavatar.
few months back therewas a review about Aswath Narayan s concert in which Sagara sayana vibho was mentioned as swati tirunal kriti. it is MDR s composition andhis mudrai is varadadasa.
dont know why critics write such wrong comments.

[arasi]

'enakkunniru padam 'ninaikka' varamaruLvAi'
ninaitha pin varam 'kiDaikkum'

'enakkuL iruppadu'! One has to go on a more rigorous search for It!

It's not easy to hear all the words even when they are sung with clarity, unless we are familiar with a song. Still, reviewers have to make an extra effort to get the words right. Googling yields results, doesn't it?

[rshankar]

dont know why critics write such wrong comments.

We can all wonder till the cows come home, but will never understand the shoddiness...it was always pointed out to us growing up that we (as Indians) had to take great pride in our work, as we believed that our professions were our gods (seyyum tozhilE deivam) - I always wonder how these so called critics and editors take pride in such shoddy work!

[Rsachi]

Over time I have come across three types of reviews in the Hindu:
1. The eager pedagogue who wants to teach and moralise. The reviews will begin with words like, "salvation comes not from panditya, but bhakti, says the bard of Thiruvaiyyaru".
2. The reviewer wanted to cover xxxx star's concert, but was assigned to yyyy star's. You can read between the letters that anguish. You will find sentences like, "instead of choosing traditionally excellent ragas like Kambhoji or Kapi, where the leading stars of today (read xxxx) excel, yyyy made a misguided choice of singing Nasikabhushani as the main."
3. Lost souls who have no clue and perhaps no smartphone or the guts to go and ask the musicians what the songs and ragas are. So they make hasty notes and hope to hold on to the job by meeting the deadline. Any way who reads these reviews?

[rupavathi]

V Bala who wrote this particular review is one of the more balanced and well-informed writers for The Hindu. He is also a vainika as well as one of the active committee members of the Ayodhya Mandapam, W Mambalam. In this particular piece, though he covers the spirit of the Ramanatakam presentation well, he has made a couple of bloopers: "enakkul iruppadu" being one and the other more egregious one being the mention of Chandrasekara Sarma instead of KVG as the third accompanist...

Kudos to The ARTery, btw, for a well-conceived and executed festival!

[rshankar]

I was finally able to catch up with some of the archived webcasts! Great job - both with the line up as well as with the recording!

Like many, I saw Kaveri to Kodambakkam Suhasini and Subhashree (who IIRC, is a member of this forum) - very well done, very slick and left us wanting more. A couple of points: All the singers were great! Very nice choices. One crib: The words that Saindhavi sang did not appear to be part of at least one song - in the MLV number 'ADal kANIrO' the words she sang did not match the original - 'piLLai pEr kiDaiyAda vanjiyin kUliALAy...', and I had to laugh out alond when I heard 'siddhanai pOlE' instead of 'pittanai pOlE kai pirambAlE paTTa aDi'! And like VK, I felt that her pitch was a tad too high for clarity in this program.

Also, when discussing Adi Narayana Rao and the song tIsulAvudE, I wish mention had been made of the hindi song (kuhU kuhU bOlE kOyaliyA, also composed by the same music director) and was certainly a much bigger hit than the tamizh version. IIRC, although both movies (svapna sundari and maNALanE mangaiyin bhAgyam) were released in the same year, the hindi movie came out first.

PS: Who is Mrs. Abhishek that people were refering to? I thought it was rather rude, because, as she was one of the people on stage, she had a distinct identity of her own...