French artists and Carnatic musicians to play novel notes
Imagine hearing Carnatic-styled vocal recital of Sanskrit shloka Shantakaram Bhajagshayanam Padmanabham Suresham – in a musical backdrop created with amalgamation of sounds of bass, lead guitar, soprano saxophone and drum. And can you visualize artists performing Kathak and Bharat Natyam on these tunes accompanied by flute, mrudangam, violin, ghatam, thavil and chenda?
To experience how seamlessly these art forms merge, you can participate in three-day live concerts of Indo-French artistic creation at Natrani to be organised from April 12 by the Alliance Française d’Ahmedabad and Darpana Performing Group.
“OZMA meets DARPANA is a spontaneous experiment where the encounter of French Jazz and Indian classical music and dance would happen on stage,” says Jayan Nair, Carnatic musician, vocalist and versatile artist playing harmonium, synthesizer, violin and percussion instruments. Nair is to lead this experiment as a vocalist.
A group of six Carnatic artists — Nair, Rajesh Parichipully on flute, T Palanivelu playing thavil and ghatam, Manikanthan percussion artist playing mrudangam, Shajeesh Rajan playing violin — would be accompanied by four French artists — Adrien Dennefeld playing guitar, Stephane Scharie on drums, Edouard Sero-Guillaume on bass and David Florsch playing saxophones. Kathak artist Sanjukta Sinha and Bharat Natyam artist Reventa Sarabhai would perform on this fresh fusion.
“This is first of its kind artistic improvisation,” says Stephane – one of the OZMA band artists who are in India on a residency programme since 2009 and has performed in more than 12 cities.“We are performing in Ahmedabad for the first time. And we plan to amuse the audiences with novel notes,” he says.
French artists and Carnatic musicians have been practising together since beginning of April. “We are learning to collaborate arts with a new vision to create fresh patterns,” says David.
