Tribute to Pandit Ravi Shankar

This past April 27, I took part in a concert in honour of the late Pandit Ravi Shankar, organized by Hindustani vocalist Vinay Bhide, in Ottawa. The evening concert took place at the Centrepointe Studio Theatre in Ottawa. The concert included performances by vocalist Vinay Bhide, Aditya Verma (sarod; Montreal), Bageshree Vaze (kathak dance; Toronto), Jonathan Voyer (santoor; Montreal), and Tara Krishnan (Bharatanatyam dance), and Kiran Morarji (Toronto) and myself on tabla.

I accompanied Jonathan Voyer for his set, as well as Vinay Bhide for his, followed by a concluding piece with the Ottawa Ensemble, joined by some of the other artists.

It was a beautiful evening, and it was a pleasure to have participated. I really enjoy these types of concerts, where many artists get together and collaborate. Pt. Ravi Shankar was such an important artist of our time, having influenced and inspired so many musicians around the world.

Accompanying santoor player, Jonathan Voyer

Accompanying vocalist Vinay Bhide, with his son Udit on harmonium.

All artists on stage for the final bhajan, composed by Pt. Ravi Shankar.

Thank you to Caroline Tabah for the photos!

Saturday Matinee with Ragleela

Yesterday, Ragleela performed an afternoon concert at the Salle de Diffusion Parc-Extension in Montreal. We didn't know what to expect from a concert at 4pm, but the hall was completely full to capacity (overflowing, in fact)! I suppose it helps that the concert was free. :)

As some of you may have seen in previous posts, the Ragleela ensemble is somewhat variable in instrumentation. For this concert, the group was made up of Uwe on sitar (and sansa), Jean-Marc on guitar (his custom 7-string, and gourd guitar), Cédric on contrabass, Guillaume on clarinet (and bass-clarinet), and myself on tabla (with my new tabla-percussion kit that includes two Tablatones and a couple of cymbals).

Aside from the opening tune, View of the Green Valley, all the pieces we played were from Ragleela's upcoming CD. This was also the concert premiere of Open Horizons and Sansala, both of which were composed mainly by Jean-Marc, making them oddities in our repertoire (most of Ragleela's music is principally composed by sitarist Uwe). Open Horizons is in drut Teentaal, and features some lovely melodies, and virtuosic solos exchanges between the sitar and the guitar. Sansala features some haunting melodies on bass clarinet, with the tabla and sansa providing a relentless groove in three. Unfortunately, I can't post any samples until the CD is released!

The next Ragleela concerts are set for July 21 in Sainte-Therese, and August 18 in Vercheres. The new album should be out this fall!

Please visit my Facebook page for even more photos!

Thank you to Caroline for capturing these musical moments.

Ragleela Quartet in Prévost

This past March 16, Ragleela played our first concert since being in the studio this past January. It was really great to be back in action, performing with the group. We played a mix of old and new tunes. Cédric, who recorded with us on contrabass, wasn't available for the performance, and so we had Matthieu with us as a special guest. The concert took place at the Église St-Francois-Xavier in Prévost, which is just a little bit past Saint Jerome, in the Laurentians.

I had just received my TransTabla the Monday prior, and so this concert was a perfect opportunity to test out the TransTabla and its alternative tuning mechanism. Just before beginning the concert, it seems that there was a very significant temperature change, and so my tabla was very flat; almost a full semi-tone. With just a small crank of the TransTabla, I had my tabla back up to pitch in record time. Of course, I could have easily re-tuned the traditional way, but the TransTabla certainly saved me a lot of time in this instance! Also, when I fly with tabla, or when the temperature is below freezing, I prefer to loosen my tabla for transport, as a precaution. This was also much faster with the TransTabla.

In a way, the TransTabla reminds me of the early timpani tuning mechanisms. At first, timpani were tuned with individual tension rods, each with its own tuning key. Later, mechanisms were developed so that by turning one key, the tension around the entire drumhead could be adjusted simultaneously, and eventually, this was replaced with the timpani pedals that we have now. Hmm, a pedal to re-tune tabla? Probably not! :)

Thanks to Caroline Tabah for the concert photos!

Two Gurus in Two Weeks

The Indian classical music scene in Montreal seems to be growing of late. Not that we necessarily have more locals professionally playing Indian music, but that more and more artists are passing through Montreal to perform. This fall, it seems that there is a concert every week or two! The first couple of weeks of October were quite intense, as in the first week, my friend Jonathan Voyer hosted his santoor Guru, Pandit Satish Vyas, and the week after, Uwe Neumann's Guru, Sri Partha Bose came to visit.

In both cases, I was fortunate to be their accompanist for both their private teaching, and in concert!

On October 4, I organized a workshop for Pt. Satish Vyas (himself a senior disciple of the legendary Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma) at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. It was an introductory workshop on santoor and the North Indian classical music traditions.

The following day, I accompanied both Satishji and Jonathan for a concert at Tanna Schulich Hall, appropriately named Parampara, which was presented under the banner of Jonathan's organisation, Samskara. Tanna Hall has a perfect acoustic for Indian classical music, and while we did amplify a bit, the audio staff and equipment are of such quality, that we could not feel that we were being amplified. Crystal-clear sound!

Accompanying Jonathan Voyer.

Parampara - Guru and Shishya!

Accompanying Pandit Satish Vyas.

Dan Blanchard (also a disciple of Pt. Satish Vyas, who kindly MCed for us in English), Satishji, and Jonathan.

The next week, I had the great fortune to accompany sitarist Partha Bose in concerts at H-OM Yoga and Equilibrium Yoga on October 12 and 13 respectively. It was quite amazing to perform in such intimate settings with an artist of this calibre, who could just have easily filled a large concert hall. I considered myself privileged to have the best seat in the house, right next to Parthaji, where I could hear all the wonderful nuances of his beautiful alaps.

Accompanying Sri Partha Bose at Equilibrium Yoga.

Aha!

It was a great pleasure, and a great learning experience. I'm very much looking forward to both of their next visits to Montreal!

Thank you to Caroline Tabah for the photos!

PARAMPARA with Pandit Satish Vyas, October 5

This coming October 5, I will have the pleasure of accompanying my friend Jonathan Voyer's Guruji, Pandit Satish Vyas, in concert at Tanna Schulich Hall. This concert promises to be a truly special occasion, with both Satishji and Jonathan performing. A santoor festival! :)

Truly an event not to be missed for Indian music lovers in Montreal. You can keep up to date with the concert at its Facebook event page.

Friday, October 5, 2012 at 7:30pm
Tanna Schulich Recital Hall
Schulich School of Music of McGill University
555 Sherbrooke West, Montreal

Admission: 35$, 20$, 16$ (students)
Reservations: 514-398-4547

Here is a small clip to whet your appetite!

Sitaria at the Espace Cercle Carré

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure to perform a noon-hour concert with sitarist Uwe Neumann at the Espace Cercle Carré. The ECC is an artist co-op, and they have recently established a summer noon-hour concert series called Les Midis Musique. Situated in Old Montreal, the ECC has a lovely performance space, ideal for Indian classical music. It's an intimate space with a truly excellent acoustic. Uwe and I had a great time, as usual.

Uwe played Alap and Jor in Raag Jog, and I accompanied him in compositions in vilambit and drut Teentaal. We then followed up with compositions in Raag Bhairavi in Vilambit Teentaal, and Madhya Dadra.

Mill Race Festival with Galitcha

Another late posting - This past July 30 and 31, I performed with Galitcha at the Mill Race Festival of Traditional Folk Music in Cambridge, Ontario. During the two days, we were kept quite busy! Two concerts on Saturday and a concert and workshop on Sunday. It's always a pleasure to play with Matt Smith, who joined us on mandolin and slide guitar.

Saturday evening concert with Galitcha
at the Mill Race Festival

In many folk festivals, 'workshops' tend to be more like jams. It's often musicians from a few bands, thrown together on stage based on some sort of theme. We usually end up playing a tune from each band, and jamming on each other's tunes. This was one of the first times where workshop actually meant workshop. For "Instruments of Mass Percussion," Kuljit and I were joined by amazingly talented percussionists Maninho Costa and Luis Orbegeso. We each presented our instruments and the music of their source cultures - Luis on cajon, Maninho on pandeiro, Kuljit on dholki, and myself on tabla. Everyone had such an interesting and engaging way of explaining their instruments and music. I later brought out a kanjira; who knew that it would spawn a samba jam! We also did some jamming on other traditional rhythms from India and South America. All in all, probably the best folk festival workshop that I have participated in to date!

Thanks to the Mill Race Festival for having invited us to perform!

Photos by Caroline Tabah.

OpenMind Festival with sitarist Uwe Neumann

Catching up on some old posts - This past August 11, I had the great pleasure to accompany sitarist Uwe Neumann at the Open Mind Festival in Curran, Ontario. This Eco-Festival includes live music, kirtan, DJs, and various environmental and healing sessions and workshops. Upon arrival, our travel distance was calculated and our parking cost was based on our CO2 emissions! This is the first time that I have seen this approach; I think the festival organizers pass on the money to an organisation that will plant trees to counteract everyone's emission pollution.

Indian classical music workshop with Uwe Neumann

In the afternoon, we gave a 90-minute workshop/performance on Indian classical music. Uwe started with the ektara, explaining the idea of drone and how the overtones contain all the pitches of the scale. We then played a short Bengali folk piece with the ektara. Next, we got into more of the nitty gritty, demonstrating the sitar and tabla, and talking about raag and taal. We played a short classical piece, and afterwards had an interesting exchange with the audience.

Uwe and his huge ektara

Reciting tabla bols during the workshop

Later that evening, we performed a full sitar and tabla concert. It's great to have the time to do a full alap-jor-jhala, with gats in vilambit, madhya, and drut. Uwe was really in the mood and we had some great exchanges. As is the tradition with Uwe, we ended with a short piece on sansa and tabla.

Evening concert at Open Mind

Photos by Caroline Tabah

In concert with Steve Gorn

This past July 27, I had the great pleasure of accompanying bansuri master Steve Gorn at the Espace Cercle-Carré in Old Montreal. He came up from his home in the US to spend some time with his student Alexandre Lavoie and to do some Montreal sightseeing, and so we thought it would be great to organize a small concert for him while he was here.

The Espace Cercle-Carré is a new performance space in an artists' co-op. The space is quite reverberant, and a very beautiful acoustic for Indian classical music. We performed without any amplification, in a house-concert style setup. We all really enjoyed the vibe, and hopefully I will be able to organize other Indian music concerts there in the future.

Some concert attendees posted other photos of the performance here and here.

It was a real pleasure to have Steve perform in Montreal. Hopefully he will be back again sometime soon!

Montreal Constellation

This past November 27, I was extremely honoured to have been invited to peform as part of the Kabir Cultural Centre's Montreal Constellation concert. For this special event, they invited all the local practitioners of Hindustani classical music to collaborate in an evening performance.

Each artist presented one raga (sorry that I don't recall all the raags performed). First to perform was santoor player Jonathan Voyer, accompanied by myself on tabla. Jonathan performed Raag Yaman in Alap, Rupaktaal, and Drut Teentaal. Next, sitarist Uwe Neumann, accompanied by Subir Dev on tabla, followed by sarodiya Aditya Verma, accompanied by myself. For the finale, all artists performed together on stage in Raag Kirwani - Alap, Vilambit Teentaal and Drut Teentaal.

It was truly a magical evening, and it was an honour to perform with such talented artists. It was a real coming-together of the local Indian music scene. This was also my first time performing with another tabla player in a traditional setting. Subir is a wonderful tabla artist, and it was a pure pleasure to perform together. I sincerely hope that we will be able to have other such occasions to perform together in the future.

For those of you who know the local scene, a major absence was felt, as bansuri player Catherine Potter was unable to participate due to her ill health. She passed away 6 days later. I will devote an entire post to Catherine in my next blog posting. Needless to say, her passing created waves across the entire Canadian music landscape, touching people from coast to coast.

All photos by Arif Khan of the Kabir Cultural Centre.

Live at Zazen with Jonathan Voyer

This past Saturday, I performed with santoor player Jonathan Voyer, as part of the Zazen Live series. My aim with this series is to promote Indian classical music in an intimate setting. All performances are acoustic.

Jonathan Voyer is a disciple of santoor maestro, Pandit Satish Vyas. We opened with Raag Dhani - first an alap, then a gat jhaptaal (10-beat cycle), followed by a gat in drut teentaal (16-beat cycle).

After a short intermission (ie: samosa break), we continued with Raag Yaman - alap, gat in rupaktaal (7-beat cycle), and ending with a gats in madhya and drut teentaal.

I was really happy with the audience turnout for this concert - we were completely sold out. As always, the audience was really attentive. Jonathan performed many interesting (and challenging) rhythmic variations, with much depth and nuance. Looking forward to future performances together!

A big thanks to Jennifer at Zazen, for her continued support of Indian classical music and dance.

Benares Chronicles, Part 3 - The United Nations of Indian Classical Music

While I was in Benares, I had asked Shen if he had any performances coming up; unfortunately, he had none booked at the time. It would have been great to see him perform. Well, Shen had a surprise up his sleeve for me. He spoke with the folks at Kashika Music Ashram and organised a performance. He was to accompany Japanese sitarist, Yasuhiro Minamizawa... AND, to my surprise... I was to play tabla solo.

The final lineup was made up of Indian classical musicians from all around the world, and so Shen had the great idea to call this concert the United Nations of Indian Classical Music. Very appropriate, and I hope that this concept will continue in the years to come.

KASHIKA MUSIC ASHRAM

presents

United Nations of Indian Classical Music

Kashika Music Hall

Near R.B. Katra Post Office

Bengali Tola Lane

Monday, 21st December, 2009 at 7pm

ARTISTS:

Yuki Taniguchi (Japan - disciple of Pt. Ritwik Sannyal) - SANSKRIT MANTRA

Shawn Mativetsky (Canada - disciple of Pt. Sharda Sahai) - TABLA SOLO

with Aneesh Mishra (India - disciple of Pt. Kanhaiyalal Mishra) - SARANGI

Yasuhiro Minamizawa (Japan - disciple of Smt. Shrabani Biswas) - SITAR

with Shen Flindell (Australia - disciple of Pt. Ashutosh Bhattacharya) - TABLA

Australia, Canada, Japan, and India ... not a bad start for the United Nations of Indian Classical Music! A few days before the performance, we all met at Kashika Music House to give press interviews. Here we are (minus Aneesh), jamming for the cameras.

When the day of the performance came around, I really had no idea how many people would show up. The Kashika Music Hall is a small, intimate performance space. The musicians perform acoustically, with no amplification, and we are extremely close to the audience. The capacity of the space is maybe 40 people; the feeling is like a house concert. At around 6:50, the hall was quite empty, but by 7:00, it was completely full, and by 7:15 all the doors were opened and people were filling the street outside!

First to perform was Yuki, singing Sanskrit mantras. Her background is in yoga and dhrupad, and she has found a great way to combine the two, in the form of naad yoga. Her voice was very calm and composed, and set the mood for the other performances to come. The mantras allowed us to focus on the musical performance taking place, and leave behind the various sounds of the nearby lane.

Next, I performed tabla solo. Opening with a Ganesh vandana, I followed with vilambit and madhya teentaal. Aneesh played beautifully; there is really nothing quite like the sound of sarangi. The audience was very kind and appreciative, and I was surrounded by the now-familiar faces of Debabrata-ji, Shen, Yuki, Hiro, Rob, Jay, Nick (another person that I have known online for a long time, but had never met before), Ghirau (Amarnathjee's sitar-playing son, who I had the pleasure of practicing with) and guru-bhais Jeff and Anjan, and that really motivated me. After a few minutes of playing, Pt. Pooran Maharaj arrived. When Shen and I had visited him a few days prior (see previous blog post), we invited him to our performance and he promised to come; well, he did! Let's just say that I felt some additional pressure at this point (!!!), but he was so encouraging and kind to me during the performance, that I really felt great and highly motivated while I was playing. What an experience!

(A small note about the Benares tabla lineage: Pt. Pooran Maharaj, aside from being the son of the late Pt. Kishan Maharaj, is a disciple of Pt. Kanthe Maharaj, making him guru-bhai with Gurujee (Pt. Sharda Sahai). Shen's guru, Ashu Babu was also a disciple of Pt. Kanthe Maharaj.)

Last on the program was Hiro's sitar performance, accompanied by Shen. Finally, I would get to see Shen perform. I really enjoyed Hiro's alap - it was very sensitive and subtle, with lots of nuance in the meends. When Hiro introduced the alap, Shen played an uthaan that I would describe as being 'deep'. His time-feel is right on, and his baya playing is very smooth and melodic; a very sweet sound overall. It was obvious that Hiro and Shen enjoy playing together, as they would often play off each other, and I really enjoyed watching Hiro's tihai challenges. :)

The United Nations of Indian Classical Music, right after the performance.

A great experience, and a perfect ending to my trip to Benares. Many thanks to Shen for organizing this concert. He opened the concert by saying to everyone that he had put together this concert just for me. Wow! I hope that we can find other occasions to musically come together again.

You can read Shen's blog post on the same subject, at his blog, Tabla in Hand.