Carnatica Brothers @ Brahma Gana Sabha, Chennai

Venue: Sivagami Pettachi Auditorium, Luz Church Road, Mylapore, Chennai

Date: 25 Dec 2006

Organizer: Brahma Gana Sabha

Vocal: Carnatica Brothers – Sri Sashikiran & Sri Ganesh

Violin: Sri Mysore V. Srikanth

Mridangam: Sri Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman

Ghatam: Sri Vaikkom Gopalakrishnan

List of songs:

1) vanajAkshA (varnam) – rItigowLa – kanDa aTa – vInA kuppaiyer

2) teliyalEru – dhEnukA – Adi – thyAgarAja (S)

3) manasA yetulO – malayamArutam – rUpakam – thyAgarAja (ANS)

4) EmA ninnE – mukhAri – misra chApu – subbarAya sAstri (A)

5) ninnucheppa – mandAri – Adi – paTTaNam subramaNya iyer

6) srI dakshiNAmUrtE – shankarAbharaNam – misra jampa – muthuswAmi dIkshitar (AST)

7) gOvardhana giridhara – darbAri kAnaDA – Adi – nArAyaNa tIrtar

8 ) sAramaina – behAg – rUpakam – swAti tiruNAL

9) jagadhOdhAraNa – kApi – Adi – purandaradAsa

10) dirana tana dIm (tillAnA) – chenchuruTTi – Adi – vINA sEshaNNA

11) english nOte – sankarAbharaNam – Adi (tisra gati) – harikEsanallUr muthiAh bhAgavathar

12) makuTakE mangaLam (mangaLam) – madyamAvati – Adi – purandaradAsa

(Key: O=raga outline, A=raga alapana, N=neraval, S=kalpana swaram, T=taniavartanam)

Carnatica Brothers started their morning concert with the rItigOwLa aTa tala varnam which is one of my personal favorites. The raga alapanas for malayamArutam and shankarAbharaNam were done by Sri Sashikiran while the alapana for mukhAri was done by Sri Ganesh. The not-so-often-heard shankarAbharaNam kriti “srI dakshiNAmUrtE” was taken up as the main composition and rendered well. The kalpana swaram was put with eduppu 0.5 beat before samam at “srI dakshiNAmUrtE” and taniavartanam was also given at the same place …… and what a class act the taniavartanam was !!! Sri Umayalpuram Sivaraman simply blasted his way through it. Sri Vaikkom Gopalakrishnan on the ghatam also played very well. Usually, the difficulty in playing taniavartanams in talams not very often used in concerts is that the percussionist has to try and improvise much more than playing in say common talams like Adi or rUpakam. A task of even greater difficulty for the percussionist is to try to adjust to the varying speeds with which the singer/main performer may put different beats of the talam due to loss of control (and/or any other reasons) and try to still fit in his calculations. Sri Umayalpuram Sivaraman, with all his experience, excelled at this. For example, while playing kOrvais he seemed to exactly know which sollu would fall at which beat, not only in the normal speed, but also while doing tisram or while playing at double the speed.