Ganesh-Kumaresh at Kamani

Last evening Ganesh and Kumaresh, performed at the Kamani Auditorium as part of the annual Parampara Festival organized each year by Natya Taringini.

The concert was short and in under two hours, the duo performed:

1. A Purvi Kalyani piece
2. A Ragam Thanam Pallavi in Kalyanavasantam (a raagam I got to listen to after ages) and with some switching to Ataana, Nalinakanthi, Revati and Sivaranjini in the end.
3. Sri Rama Namamu in Nadnamakriya. It was insufferable. Anything that remotely resembles a bhajan, when performed on a concert platform, puts me off.
4. A brisk Madhyamavati piece which included snippets of the popular krithis set to it.

Patri Satish Kumar, as always, showcased his firepower with the Mridangam.

The concert was preceded by a Bharatnatyam recital by the Malayalee husband-wife duo: Shijith Nambiar and Parvathy Menon. Since I have no knowledge of dance to evaluate their performance, I can only say they were impressive. The first piece which they peformed to was a Papanasam Sivan varnam in Nattakurinji that was sung by Sudha Raghuraman.

The mini adventure after the concert which ended at 10pm was in finding a restaurant that didn’t have a waiting time of less than sixty minutes. We hadn’t factored in Karva Chauth!