TM Krishna @ Brahma Gana Sabha, 8/Dec/2011

[sankark]

TM Krishna - Vocal
HN Bhaskar - Violin
Praveen Kumar - Mridangam
M Gurumurthy - Ghatam

Concert was billed to start at 6 but started at 6:15 pm and ended around 8:50 pm - so I guess some tukkadas were missed out (Irakkam varamal perhaps? In that case, I have no problem at all).

Janaki Ramana - Suddha Seemandini - Adi - T (S @ rakthana)
Eththanai thaan - Anandabhairavi - Adi - ? (RS @ ethanai) - lovely alapana and return. A slow rendition of the song and swaras in the vilamba kala. Was thinking fast swaras would mar the beauty of the alapanai and the slow song and he eschewed the fast swaras that made the whole exercise very aesthetic
Janakipathe - Karaharapriya - Adi - Papanasam Sivan - 5 min filler with enthusiastic percussion support
Talli ninnu nera - Kalyani - M Chapu - Shyama Sastri (RN@kamarirani purani S@shyamakrishna) - a rather long elaborate affair lasting almost 1 hour 10 mins. Usually get turned off by Kalyani but for Kalyani lovers would have been a fantastic one I guess. He definitely overdid the last swaras which were looooooooooooong but no interesting pattern. Tani was good as well.
RTP (Sarasadalaya Nayana Hare Krishna) - Khamas - M Chapu, ragamalika swaras in Khamas, Saveri, Huseni, Bilahari?, Udayaravichandrika and a mini tani (Is it possible to have a 5 kalai m chapu, the pallavi took 5 avartanas of m capu).
Thava vibho - Yamuna Kalyani - Adi - ??
Pavamana - Madyamavathi - Adi - T

Overall a good concert but at the end of concert, I didn't get immensely satisfied feeling. Hope he truncates the length of his long swara korvais and volume as well.

Just before the mangalam, he announced "Even if you don't clap, we are all happy". No idea why he observed that

PS: Praveen Kumar - he is grand son of Tanjore Upendran, disciple of Guruvayur Dorai.

[sankark]

One more observation he made - "Used to announce don't walk out during thani, now it seems like I have to announce don't walk out during violin vinyasam also". Such is the state today.

The RTP followed the pattern of Krishna - Ragam, Bhaskar - vinyasam in tanam format and continued tanam and then pallavi.

[vasanthakokilam]

>(Is it possible to have a 5 kalai m chapu, the pallavi took 5 avartanas of m capu)

I assume you are asking if he could have kept 5 counts for each of the misra chapu beats instead of 5 avarthanas of m chapu?

Possible or it can be a nadai pallavi in misra nadai over a 5 count thala cycle.

At what point was the arudi? That will provide some cludes.

[sankark]

Not asking, I am just wondering if it is possible to have a N kalai chapu at all, has anyone ever done that. Have never seen a chapu tala with kalai so far. The way he and I kept tala was 5 avarthana of m chapu.

Arudi (for that matter nadai/gati etc) - now that is positively esoteric territory for me, so wouldn't be able to answer that. What I observed was that in the pallavi there was a gap between nayana and the start of hare, is that what is the arudi - the ending for the first part of the pallavi? "Sarasadala nayana" took 3 avarthanas and "Hare krishna" took a little less than 2 avarthanas and there was a gap between the two.

[kachapah]

I thought the last ragam in the RTP was mohanakalyani not bilahari. Am I right?

[sankark]

The last one was udaya ravichandrika - that he announced. It was not bilahari certainly either; since there was a s r g p d n sequence that I remember in that one. That rules out mohanakalyani also, doesn't it. If I remember right it has s r g p d n in the arohanam and m also in avarohanam. I can't say whether it was r1/r2 g1/g2 etc as I am not skilled to identify swaras. So any one else that attended the concert can throw light.

[vasanthakokilam]

>is that what is the arudi - the ending for the first part of the pallavi? "Sarasadala nayana" took 3 avarthanas

Looks to be so. If we go by the usual convention that arudi falls on an anga boundary, then we can say it is Viloma Trisra Rupakam, Misra Nadai . It is a stretch and may not be what TMK had in mind.

On the thing about if there is kaLai business with chapus, I do not know, I have not seen that either.

[vigneshishwar89]

The artist who played the Ghatam was Shri N. Guruprasad and not M Gurumurthy. And the raga that you are talking about was Mohana Kalyani.

Thank You