Sahana Vasudevan@SK Balasubramanian Homage on Dec 30th,2018

[rajeshnat]

Sahana Vasudevan@SK Balasubramanian Homage on Dec 30th,2018
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Vocal : Sahana Vasudevan
Violin : Mysore Sangeetha Dileep
Mrudangam : R Rajesh, (may I know his guru?)

Concert Type : Non Nirvana - concert to follow
Day/Duration : Sunday/ 2 hours , 1 noon to 3pm
Hall : Indira Ranganathan trust,Alwarpet
Sabha : On behalf of Late Sk Balasubramanian (gobilalita of our forum)

01. vanajAkshirO(varnam) - kalyani - Poochi

02. chEdE buddhi - Atana - T

• 5 mins swaras

03. inta kannanAnda - bilahari - patnam

• 7 mins alapana
• 5 mins violin return

04. rAkA sasivadana - takkA - T
05. gitArtamu (R,S) - shuruTTi - T

• 8 mins alapana
• 6 mins violin return

06A. akshayalingavibHO (R,N,S,T) - shankarabharanam - MD

• 13 mins alapana
• 7 mins violin return
• neraval for 7 mins in akshara swaroopa amrithA
• 4 mins swaras

06B. tani for 7 mins

07. thillana - khamas - poochi


Since Sk Balasubramanian(gobilalita) passed away , year on year Mohan(kamalamba)with his family has been conducting concerts . For few years till 2017 the venue was eambalam in BesantNagar . Now this year 2018 the yearly homage has moved to prime musical destination-alwarpet . Mohan (kamalAmba )for a day at least is powerful alwarpet sabha mogul .

I have personally not been to this venue , it is really good . Kudos to the family of vidushi Aishwarya Shankar and family this place has great acousitics and with the slope of gallery steps ,irrespective of whereever you sit you can have eye contact with the performing musicians.

I did not attend the previous morning shertalai concert . Mohan and family served lunch . I also did not eat , infact having planned to attend this afternoon 1 to 3 pm concert, I did have an early lunch. While the venue showed promise of rich Vitamin D sunshine for a brief time , the Vitamin D source went hiding , there was breeze threatening to rain , but we had no rains. The hall with steps ensured Eye contact that was quite handy as we all can sleep that too with the breeze

Sahana Vasudevan's guru is PSN , i am not sure if PSN mAmA only helped with his aasarivatham or was there also intense teaching that shri PSN gave to sahana .I am asking this question as this vidushi sahana is very young and she performed with half sari . She started with a nice kalyani varnam. Crowd was not restless (not because of melakartha 65) it was only as most of them joined post lunch .The hall which is a garden converted hall, rasikas had to move from lunch to gallery and there was bit of lack of attention span.

sahana's voice was bit not smooth but as she sang from 3rd number roughness went away significantly. Her second in atanA was well done with nice swaras. Bilahari as a submain and this krithi intakannA was in lot of circulation few years back and she sang clinically both the alapana and the krithi of patnam. bilahari Swaras was measured and she did well. Filler takka did not register me that well

Shurutti alapana was quite methodical and the subsequent krithi gitArtamu was done well. Around this time a certain sampradaya madi madi tightness hit my psyche.One has to give it to her to take a gitArtamu in shurutti not an easy krithi and raga to take with alapana and swaras. The sequence of bit heavy gitartamu in shurutti was subsequently followed by the grand akshyalinga vibHO in shankarabharanam . She did well the alapana at times voice had to be cleared but she did not sag .Shankarabharanam is a very easiest raga to sag that too his sister kalyani was the opener , but she did well. The tough uphill dikshitar krithi was another madi madi rendition , the neraval line akshaya swaroopa was metered well with fairly crisp swaras .She could have hit more higher notes like say her paramaguru SSI or MS amma but all that did not happen in shankarabharanam . The last thillana in poornachandrika was another pracheena number to continue her madi madi sangeetham route.

Mysore sangeetha dileep bowed the best from second half , her tone got bit more intense from midpoint of the concert . R Rajesh in mrudangam was very apt , I have not heard or seen him play at all. His sound was clean and he neatly went with the flow of the song.There was not one beat to drown the voice of the vocalist he was watchful and certainly lifted the concert with his consistency.

This young vidushi Sahana Vasudevan is based out of Bay Area, California . She is very young . I personally feel in this concert taking shurutti and then shankarabharanam with two heavy krithis gitArtamu and akshayalinga was quite eclectic. She has a body language to intensely look musically inside , bit more eye contact with crowd and fellow artist will help .

Rasikas in the hall were willing to cheer more they also got bit lost with the timing of cheer in successive krithis and ragas like gitArtamu and akshayalingavibhO the openings to cheer were less. I also aurally spotted a voice which appeared to have kind of recovered from a bit of seasonitis ,This young sahana appeared as a more intense and intellectual musician. All said sahana like the raga sahana is quite a long haul.

Overall a very good concert for near 2 hours

[arasi]

Rajesh,
First off, missed seeing you in the short time I was in Chennai. Would not have missed GBL's day and concert(s) either
Sahana surfaced at the Cleveland festival a few years ago. VKV was very impressed with her singing. She has a special kind of voice (season voice apart). Her emoting appealed to me a lot as well. I thought she was from India, from a family of nagaswaram players. Has she settled in CA now?
Hope Mohan will kindly share parts of the concerts with us.

Mohan,
My miss. I haven't missed a single year so far I think, of the concerts you and your family lovingly arrange in memory of your father. Regards to your mother and all.

[rajeshnat]

Sahana surfaced at the Cleveland festival a few years ago. VKV was very impressed with her singing. She has a special kind of voice (season voice apart). Her emoting appealed to me a lot as well. I thought she was from India, from a family of nagaswaram players. Has she settled in CA now?

That nagaswaram family sahana is sahana sAmraj. This sahana vasudevan is different.

[arasi]

Thanks for correcting me, Rajesh.

[kamalamba]

Thanks Rajeshnat for attending and posting this review.

I really enjoyed listening to Sahana Vasudevan. I liked the MD masterpiece akshaya linga vibhO the best and enjoyed the rest as well.

Arasi madam, we missed you as well.

I have full audio recordings. If someone can tell me the easiest way to share files of ~ 200 Mb, I will appreciate it and will share the concert recordings.

Regards
Mohan

[rshankar]

Sahana Vasudevan is a violinist/vocalist from the US, who, IIRC, in addition to managing a crazy schedule involving intense practice sessions, has also managed to graduate with a degree in Math from Harvard...
Her mother (Vanaja) is a member here.

[kamalamba]

Absolutely right rshankar.
Furthermore, Sahana is now a PhD student in MIT, Cambridge MA.

[Nick H]

Using my phone in the concert, , Google informed me that she has loved both maths and music since early childhood. She is in her 20s and set for an academic career. And a musical one as well, probably

[vanajan]

Thank you Rajesh for taking the time to attend the concert and write. My pleasure to meet you, Mohan, Nick and of course Sridhar(sridhar_ranga), my dear friend and undergraduate classmate.

Mrudangam : R Rajesh, (may I know his guru?)

R. Rajesh is a student of Mathirimangalam Swaminthan sir.

i am not sure if PSN mAmA only helped with his aasarivatham or was there also intense teaching that shri PSN gave to sahana

Sahana always has the aasthirvatham of PSN mama, as in fact all his students have. She has been learning directly from him since 2003. As a result, I and my husband have had the extraordinary good fortune of observing one of the finest teachers teach his students in general and, specifically Sahana. Interestingly, PSN mama has told us parents and few others that for few of his students he didn't have to teach as much, as they were able to figure things out themselves, and Sahana is one of them. Sahana is also a violinist.

In 2007, PSN mama introduced us to Balu sir (Dr. B. Balasubrahmaniyan, Wesleyan University) and asked him to teach Sahana the Dhanammal school repertoire. She learned from Balu sir from 2007-2010.

As rshankar and kamalamba have said, she is currently in her 2nd year of PhD at MIT in pure mathematics, after graduating in math from Harvard.

This viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2566 is a write-up on her very first vocal concert on this site and viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20449 thread has more details about her gurus and her.

On Jan 3rd, Sahana accompanies R. Rathipriya on the violin for Parthasarathy Swamy sabha at 12:30 pm and has a vocal concert at 4:30 pm for Asthiga Samajam Venus colony, Alwarpet. That will be end of this season for her. Forum members, please attend and encourage if your time permits.

Vanaja

[arasi]

Vanaja,
Thank you for your detailed post which goes to prove Sahana's assets as a scholar and musician and dispels my AL mARATTam (misidentifying)!

Makes us doubly proud when we rasikAs see youngsters from outside India prove themselves to be so good at CM--in Sahana's case, both in vocal and violin. The very best to her in her academics and music and to you dedicated parents, in the new year!

[vanajan]

Thank you Arasi for your kind wishes. Happy New year to all!
Just got my own forum-id! Need not piggyback on Sahana's anymore!

[rajeshnat]

sahana is currently in her 2nd year of PhD at MIT in pure mathematics, after graduating in math from Harvard.

Vanaja,
Hmmm that is nice . Looks she has bit adopted an opposite contrast approach with her studies and arts.,In this concert atleast not much application of Pure Maths in her carnatic music. I personally dont like that much maths as long as it is secretely handshaked with percussion artist it is fine.

Studying in Harvard and MIT and also balancing with Semmangudi-VeenaDhanammal thru their tutors PSN-DrBalasubramanyam is quite an achievement. Best wishes to sahana.

[rbharath]

Rajesh,

12:01 is already pm. 1 o clock is much into the pm domain. far from noon.

intakannAnandamEmi is a tyagaraja kriti.

[vanajan]

Thanks Rajesh for your kind words and wishes.

Hmmm that is nice . Looks she has bit adopted an opposite contrast approach with her studies and arts.,In this concert atleast not much application of Pure Maths in her carnatic music.

The question that Sahana gets asked often: " Do you do music like math?"
Sahana : "No, I do math like music."

[Nick H]

The question that Sahana gets asked often: " Do you do music like math?"
Sahana : "No, I do math like music."

That's lovely!

Speaking from the perspective of someone who, for instance, doesn't even know what calculus is*, I suspect that the kind of maths that Sahana does is stuff that I would never even have heard of. Carnatic-music maths is really just arithmetic, right? I don't think it even extends beyond the basic operations of +, -, * and /. Now I've said that, someone will start coming up with powers-and-roots korvais!

OK, so the calculations do not extend beyond those basic operations: I still think that the ability to do them on the fly (as my mridangam guruji once said, "Nick, you can't ask the singer to wait while you use a calculator!") and, more especially, the ability to turn them into something musical, is amazing.


*Somebody recently gave me a link to a video on that which he assured me that I would understand.

[kamalamba]

Maths and music is a well ploughed yet exciting territory, but AT THE RISK OF DIGRESSING, here is an interesting talk by Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava where he talks about Fibonacci series (aka Hemchandra numbers) and sanskrit poetry, which is obviously relevant to music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siFBqH-LaQQ