TM Krishna @ Spring Music Festival 2016

T.M. Krishna at Bengaluru Gayana Samaja - 09 Feb 2016

I was lucky to attend T.M. Krishna's concert on Tuesday (9/2/2016) as part of the Spring Music festival by Rama Lalitha Kala Mandira at Bengaluru. He was accompanied by R K Shriramkumar (Violin) and Arun Prakash (Mridangam). I am 100% sure i don't even have 1% knowledge to write about the concert / Carnatic music.. still at times, adventure is fun :) This is not a review.. just sharing my experience.

The concert was at Bangalore Gayana Samaja. As expected the parking space and hall was full well in advance, even on a working day. Luckily, I managed to get a seat on the balcony section. The good thing about T.M. Krishna's concert is, he keeps people guessing. You will never know what he will do and what he will sing. Thanks to his habit of singing differently from the usual Kacheri format. It is also interesting to see the crowd's behavior. Whenever TMK deviates from the usual methods, most of them from the 60+ years crowd sigh or they go into whispering mode and some others laugh.

The concert started around 6pm. Krishna reminded me of Sanath Jayasurya who used to hit the first 90 balls (15 overs) all over the stadium during the '96 cricket world cup, when he started with a 90 minute Ragam (Sankarabharanam - as per the uncle sitting next to me) - Thanam - Pallavi followed by a subtle Thaniyavarthanam by Arun Prakash. I was excited when he started Raga Saramati next.. because I was almost sure which song he will sing after that. But again there was a twist before the song.. he sang a little Thanam after beautifully rendering Saramati and the crowd was again smiling and some even nodding their head. As expected,  Mokshamu galada followed.. which is one of my favorite Kritis. After singing the first line, Krishna signaled Shriramkumar to continue. He played that song on violin so well that the essence of the lyrics was dripping from his fiddle.. Krishna asked Shriramkumar to continue during Anupallavi and Charanam too and the crowd was smiling. (Last time when I attended Krishna's concert during Gokulashtami celebrations at Bengaluru, Shriramkumar had played the Alaipayuthe song fully and beautifully). Finally when Krishna resumed from Veena vaadana.. a good number of people clapped.. :D Krishna paused for a while.. and the crowd got confused and stopped clapping. But he resumed and completed the song beautifully.

After the first 2 songs took more than 2 hours.. it was time now to shift the gears and move to few other good songs. Next one was a Papanasam Sivan kriti Kapali.. Karunai Nilavu.. This was followed ceto-darpana-marjanam, the first sloka of  Sri Siksastakam written by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The next one a request from a young boy who had handed over a small piece of paper to the artists during the first hour of the concert. After finishing the sloka from Sri Siksastakam, Krishna enquired if that boy was still around.. and he was there. So he sang the one the young buy had requested.. Jagadodharana. I need not write more about this one since this is a very popular one and TMK always sings this song perfectly. Just loved it.. Muttuswami Dikshitar's Bhajare re Chitta Balambika was the next one which was followed by Vaishnava Jana To. He recited the Mangala slokam and concluded with Thyagaraja composition Shyama Sundaranga in Dhanasi.  

Two songs from the evening, Jagadodharana and Shyama Sundaranga are still looping in my mind. Overall it was a pleasant experience and i loved the concert and the performance. God bless TM Krishna! :)