Brinda Manickavasagan@ SKGS on Aug 12th,2016

[rajeshnat]

Brinda Manickavasagan@ SKGS on Aug 12th,2016
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Vocal : Brinda Manickavasagan
Violin : Srilakshmi Venkataramani - may I know her guru please???
Mrudangam : Mysore L VadirAj - student of Tiruvarur bhaktavatsalam
Ghatam : Nanganallur Swaminathan

Concert Type : Nirvana - No concert to follow
Day/Duration : Friday /2 hours - 06:30 to 08:30 pm
sabha/Hall : skgs /KamakOti hall as part of Gokulashtami Series

If every live concert for the artist is like an olympics , i guess there is a citius , altius and fortius element for each and every concert . The citius is the faster sangathis propelled with more brighas more pronouned with swaras ,raga alapanas in usually the second half and many many krithis that have a faster texture . THe Fortius is the strength element - how much voice throw is there and is there a noticable energy distribution and is there any noticable sag. The altius is the higher element , this is bit difficult to completely correlate olympics and CM , What is higher altius ,is semmangudi blistering swaras in mmg 2nd half or is MDR holding more higher energy in a yadukula kAmbOdhi - this needs approximation let us put the altius as the experience of how much classical idioms is there in vidwan/vidushi brings in terms of idioms to stay away from bhajan like concert or a fusion like concert .

Brinda Manickavasaga?n (?m) and team had an adequate balance for a significant course and also there were few distinct pockets where there was imbalance

Balance of Citius Altius and Fortius
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The best balance was in the OVK thamizh krithi in neelamabari . THere are usual thamizh krithis of say few of thamizh moovar where the stresses of language keywords in thamizh is bit too hard on music and there are say usually few sanskritized thamizh krithis that gives a cushion. Here is OVK in neelambari giving that cushion what a joy to hear that krithi with a string of smooth rounded phrases

CharukEshi as a main in yesteryears era has been referred as a singapore raga - i guess the awareness of sangathis and the irrational division of rakthi and scalar ragas . When brinda took up the alapana of charukEshi i could not spot that she was going uup and down the scale and treating as a scalar raga. She sang with the rakthiness of a reetigowlai,yadhukulakAmBodi. Her layering of sangathis gave enough of charukesi feel to me

The start of sooryakantham and the reetigowlai krithi had a pretty good balance.

ImBalance of Citius Altius and Fortius
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I am fan of swaras and despite brinda singing 17 mins swaras in charuKeshi , i turned a bit swaraphobic. Her imagination was there and possibly the kuraippu segment was repeated again losing a share of aesthetics.For most time with the handover to violin in returns ,the violinist was not in line with brinda . The violinist did drag the kalapramanam and could not bring atttention to me despite my abundant love for main and charukEsi ragam. IN bilahari for the MD krithi towards the last few lines there was also a lot of fortius loss. The brindavani thillana of BMK could have had more share of raga bhavam , brindavani signal only came the best in the last alapana phrase after she ended the thillana. The ragamaliga of dasar could have had more emote especially in few pockets say during darbari malaya jagadidha bindhu or the last throw in maNirangu, but Brinda wanted to be a sabha obediant girl who was interested to wrap at exact 08:30 pm than giving the share of maharajapuram santhanam like finish.

Mysore Vadiraj is a bhakthavatsalam student . In the last 5 years there are really great mrudangam vidwans coming from bhakthavatsalam school.He is graduating from playing to a taalam to playing to a krithi and he has a real pleasant sound . Possibly he also had a difficult time like me to adjust to the kalapramana drag that the violin vidushi created . The violinist vidushi srilakshmi (she is not a young vidushi, may I know who is her guru)plays with good shruthi and her alapana standalones were well done but during krithis it was a different matter . Nanganallur swaminathan pepped enough the young vadiraj and gave good support .The taniwas bit too short , vAdiraj could not show his guru like flourishes of his younger days like a santhanam/mlv concert . I wish him best of luck to become like say sumesh narayanan.

[rajeshnat]

Vidushi Brinda USP is to bring a lot of unfamiliar krithis and she is very conscious in presenting the range of composers and languages .

1. MuddomOmu (S) - suryakantham -T
swaras for 4 mins
2. kamAkshi varalakshmi(Raga Sketch) - bilahari - MD

3. mama hridayE (R,S) - reetigowlai - MV
6 mins alapana and 4 mins violin return
4 mins swaras

4. eppadi thAn en uLLam pugundhu ennai (Raga sketch) - neelambari - OVK

5A. kripAlaya shourE (R N S T) - chArukEsi - ST
16 mins alapana and 6 mins violin return
12 mins neraval in the lines nAradha mukha muni
17 mins swaras
5B. tani for 7 mins

6.ksheerAbdhi kannikE - rAgamAliga - PD
7. thillana dheem tanana ... sogasu jooda - brindavani - BMK

If she concentrates bit more in Fortius especially when sangathis go into the second half of citius it would make it more wholesome.There is a very noticable sudden freefall during those touchpoints. Glad that she has come back after higher studies from US to take up CM .SureshVV and Nick were there.Among the artist community, Akkarai Sornalatha and her ever encouraging dad Akkarai swaminathan were there.

Overall a very good to excellent concert for 2 hours

[kvchellappa]

Kripaya palaya got telescoped.

[sureshvv]

What I liked about yesterday's concert:

1. The 1 hour charukesi with extended neraval & swaras. This is what a real main sounds like. Takes a lot of effort and vocal strength to pull this off which her school emphasizes.

2. Staying away from the tired and trite. I am sure varalakshmi was also relieved.

What bugged me:

1. Inadequate support from the left and right, for lack of motivation and experience respectively

[Nick H]

Sitting next to Suresh, I felt the same.

Brinda took my breath away for the second time in a mere three days. I really had not expected that at all.

The one-hour-long main (we looked at our watches near the start, and thought surely this must the submain, but it wasn't). After such a long, lovely neraval, I expected that the swaras would be fairly abbreviated. Brinda, though, had heaps of energy and stamina and had other ideas. Thanks to Rajesh for the timings: I had no idea that the swaras were actually longer than the neraval.

I have been absolutely stunned (in the best possible way) by Suguna Varadachary's extended neravals, and told, yes, that is her speciality. Brinda is taking strides in the same direction.

She gave her all in the long main... but still had plenty to give for the next song.

It should be mentioned that she has a really lovely voice. The essential beauty may be a blessing from the gods or from the genes, depending on one's point of view, but the strength and control must have benefited from lots of training work and practice. Her dedication is complete. She could be making her commercial fortune anywhere in the world, but wanted only to sing in Chennai. A big thank you to her parents for facilitating that!

The young mridangist needs to learn discretion. Just a little less of the fast, elaborate play when it is not actually enhancing the song, and he will be fine.

[rajeshnat]

The one-hour-long main (we looked at our watches near the start, and thought surely this must the submain, but it wasn't). After such a long, lovely neraval, I expected that the swaras would be fairly abbreviated. Brinda, though, had heaps of energy and stamina and had other ideas. Thanks to Rajesh for the timings: I had no idea that the swaras were actually longer than the neraval.

The idea of putting the minutes is for those who cannot attend to glance , pause and think on the elaboration . Ofcoure merely higher minutes does not mean it is aesthetically more better - in this case it looks like suresh/nick were bit floored by the longer charukesi swaras than me . Hayssen -You are the first who is acknowledging explicitly the usefulness of the timings, perhaps nick and timing gel well .

[cienu]

Violin : Srilakshmi Venkataramani - may I know her guru please???

Srilakshmi is the disciple of Sangitha Kalanidhi designate Vidushi A Kanyakumari

[Nick H]

Providing the timings is, maybe, a bit like including an inch scale in a picture. It just provides a scale. When it became obvious that this was a very large-scale main piece, I did, at one point, think "If Rajesh was here, we could know the actual scale." Then I found that you were there, and you have put the rule into the picture.

I was surprised to find that the swaras were actually longer than the neraval. By the time they came, we had already listened to a great deal of music in the one piece. The length of the swaras was a measure of Brinda's ability to hold my attention, which she did without my even thinking about it.

[sureshvv]

The idea of putting the minutes is for those who cannot attend to glance , pause and think on the elaboration .

Next we can put the count of the number of sangatis sung for pallavi & anupallavi.

Pretty soon we will have a full fledged kuchery scorecard copyright rasikas.org.

[sureshvv]

and the irrational division of rakthi and scalar ragas

Rajesh brings up an important point. The classification of ragas as rakthi and scalar is irrational. It is an artificial division used for political mileage (much like our caste system).

[ram1999]

Is there a possibility of a recording or at least snippets ??

[sureshvv]

KGS records everything. Not sure of how to get access.