Moving my blog over to shawnmativetsky.com

Dear friends,

With the recent update of my website, I now have the ability to integrate the blog directly into the website, so that is what I am doing; it just makes sense. I will no longer be posting updates here. Thank you to all of you for your interest in my musical adventures. Please click along to my website for the continuation of this blog in the future! If you would like to update your RSS subscription, this is the new RSS URL: http://shawnmativetsky.com/blogs/blog.atom

I hope to see you over at shawnmativetsky.com!

Shawn

Monday 29 October 2007

Rahul Sharma and Zakir Hussain in Ottawa

Hi everyone,

A special concert of note. On Wednesday, November 14, 2007, Rahul Sharma (son of Pt. Shivkumar Sharma) will perform a santoor recital, accompanied by Ustad Zakir Hussain. A concert not to be missed!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 7:30pm
Canadian Museum of Civilization
Main Theatre,
100 rue Laurier, Gatineau
Tel: 819-776-7000

Too bad they won't be performing in Montreal!

Saturday 27 October 2007

Pt. Sharda Sahai videos

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd share these short video clips from Pt. Sharda Sahai's performance in Montreal from the Annual Summer Tabla Workshop of 2006. We're hoping to have him back this year or next - stay tuned!

Pt. Sharda Sahai, tabla
Bob Becker, harmonium
August 5, 2006.
Pollack Hall, Montreal, Qc


Ganesh Paran


Benarsi Theka


Rela

Surtaal, live at Zazen

Last night, I performed with the talented bansuri player, Nicholas Williams as Surtaal at the Spa ZaZen yoga centre in old Montreal. For us, this was a great occasion to perform North Indian classical music in a great acoustic setting with no amplification. A small, intimate concert - the way this music was meant to be performed!

The first piece was in Raag Yaman, with Nicholas performing alap, jor, and jhala before beginning a gat in rupak taal. This was then followed by a gat in teentaal.

During the intermission, guests were served chai and samosas.

In the second half, we performed Raag Multani in teentaal, followed by a light piece in dadra to end off the evening.

Many thanks to the folks at ZaZen for organising the concert and for their warm reception.

Thursday 25 October 2007

Free lahara software!

Hi everyone,

For those of you who don't have a Nagma machine, or similar, TaalPulse is a great (and free) tool for your Indian music practice. I just found out about this software yesterday, when the developer, Guillaume Pothier, visited one of my tabla classes at McGill.

The software has programmable volume, tempo, and pitch for tabla, lahara, and tanpura. A large number of laharas are included. I'm just hoping that Guillaume will change the sample sounds in the software, as the melodica sample is not great. Harmonium or sarangi would be much preferable. :)

Because the software is programmed in Squeek, it can run on almost any platform (PC, Mac, Linux, even Windows Mobile!). I'm still working out the bugs in getting it to run smoothly on my PDA, but it runs fine on my PC.

For more info, screenshots, and to download the software, see this link:
http://taalpulse.sourceforge.net/

Enjoy!

Shawn

Welcome!

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my first post on my new blog. Aside from MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/shawnmativetsky), this is really my first blog as well. I thought that it would be nice to provide a news source for Indian classical / tabla-related activities in and around Montreal for those with similar interests, as well as the occasional posting about my various musical projects.

Please feel free to let me know of any related events in the area.

Shawn