Concert review
...thm. I enjoyed this song and was amazed at how different the instrument were from the ones I am used to hearing and seeing. I give their culture a lot of credit for their creativity in the way they have constructed an ensemble of fairly basic instruments and turned it into music with good timbre and dynamics. I was pleasantly surprised by the music and enjoyed the variations on the drums very much. Song in Misra Chapu (7 beats) - Melody Exposition, Solfa Syllables exchange, and a brief percussion exchange between Mrudangam and Ghatam This piece starts with the violin in a slow tempo crescendos steadily. Then the drums come in and are very dominant and the drummers do a very good job with the dynamics. They are able to get so many different sounds out of one simple drum just by the positioning of the fingers and how they strike the drum. The song is given varied effects of staccato and legato provided occasionally by the violin and the drums. The tone quality and the pitch are strengths of these skillful musicians. It was a little hard to follow around the program because the person announcing the music did not speak English very well but I believe I have the right song with the name, and the order was a little mixed up. I especially enjoyed this one because of the drum solo done by Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman. Although this lasted a while, I was so mesmerized by his exceptional abilities I didn’t realize how much time had passed. I can only imagine how many years of practice it takes to play two different melodies on a drum at the same time. This was the song that made me realize how involved their music everyone was by following along with hand gestures seemed very ethnic and interesting to me. Raagam Thaanam Pallavi: Gangaadharaa Maheshwaraa Krupaakaraa Paahimaam Paahimaam Paahi - set in Raagam Mohanam (a pentatonic major scale) and Aadhi Thaalam with many embellishments and improvisations, ending in a percussion exchange finale Mrudangam Maestro spoke before the piece and said that this particular song was to say “Protec...