Bharat Sundar at Music Academy

[pperumal]

attended this concert today.
bharat seemed very comfortable and confident - his voice was in fine form and he gave a good account of himself with the support of MS Anantakrishnan (violin) and Vijay Natesan (mridangam). i particularly liked the new face on the mridangam - though he did have a tendency to increase the kala pramanam i felt.

i applaud bharat on keeping the list tight and short:

varnam - sri
parathpara - vachaspati - rns
muruga muruga - saveri
koluvai yunnade - bhairavi - rns

now here is my personal opinion:

bharat sundar is an artist who shows great potential and one sees many shooting stars when he sings...nice voice, nice grip over layam and sings freely without constraints.
but my problem is that i never come out of the concert with that "ahaa" feeling.

i dont know how to explain it further. hope i am not being too vague.

nevertheless, i wish him the best in his musical journey.

[vasanthakokilam]

>but my problem is that i never come out of the concert with that "ahaa" feeling.

Otherwise known as the 'it' factor in American Idol terminology I am with you that you termed it as 'my problem is that...'. This happens to me too, something others rave about does not do it for me sometimes. A lot of times it is personal. There are certain timbre of voice or method of singing that penetrates beyond the rational and it is different for different people. On top of that, just like artists have their good days and bad days, we rasikas have that too.

Back to Bharat Sundar, the one concert I heard a few months back, he is part of this modern era of singers where laya exposition and manodharma are quite brilliant. He can go nuts on the niraval and kalpanaswara segments.

[mohan]

he is part of this modern era of singers where laya exposition and manodharma are quite brilliant.

This certainly contributes to the wow factor but I guess the missing feature is that special kind of bhavam - when the mind of the musician meets the heart of the listener.

[rshankar]

Meets the heart of the listener, or melts the heart of the listener?

[shankarabharanam]

i particularly liked the new face on the mridangam - though he did have a tendency to increase the kala pramanam i felt.

Vijay has been around for quite sometime. He has played for senior artists like TVS and Flute Ramani too. In fact he hasn't been given an opportunity by Sabhas to showcase his skills. He was hailed a prodigy in Mumbai and learnt from Shri T Nandakumar Sir in Mumbai and currently under Shri TV Gopalakrishnan. My best wishes to him and may he continue to rise in his career