Accompaniments:
H.N.Bhaskar – Violin
J.Vaidyanathan – Mridangam
S.Karthick – Ghatam

Where & When? – The Music Academy on 26th December

Concert Duration: 2.5 hrs

Songs List:
1. sarasIruhA – nAttai – swarams at sarasIruhA
2. nI bhajana – nAyaki
3. shrI bAlasubrahmanya – bilahari – AlApana; nerval & swarams at kanakavalli devasenOpEta
4. gAnamUrtE – gAnamUrtI
5. rAmA nI samAnamevaru – kharaharapriyA – AlApana; neraval & swarams at paluku palukulaku
6. RTP – ranjani
tAnam in bEgaDA and hindOLam
pallavi: sendil nagar mEvum kanda vaDivelanE –kaNDa triputa
swarams in bEgaDA, hindOLam, hamsanAdam, valaji, ?, kApi
tani Avartanam (just few minutes during which Karthick and Vaidyanathan played together)
7. AdaramilEn (viruttam) followed by vElanE sivabAlanE – behAg
8. viharativane (viruttam) followed by rAse hari miha – karnaranjani
9. tillAnA – vAsanti
10. mangaLam – sowrAshtram

This is the first concert of Bombay Jayashri that I went for and I must say I just loved it! I had listened to just some recordings of Bombay Jayashri before and I had not found those appealing enough to make me want to listen to more of her recordings or go for her concert. So I went with not much expectation but came out feeling so happy at having attended such an excellent concert!

Thanks to the traffic jam on TTK Road, I had to miss the first few minutes of the concert and reached just in time to hear Jayashri singing swarams for the nATTai song, sarasIruhA. I actually didn’t pay much attention to that. But from the next song, nI bhajana (I just loved the way she sang the different sangatis of nI of nI bhajana), I was hooked to the concert!

Coming to the swarams part of ranjani RTP (don’t have anything specific to write about the remaining except that I liked every moment of the concert very much), after a round of swarams in ranjani, she then sang swarams in bEgaDa and hindOLam and then came the best part of the swarams. She started with swarams in hamsanAdam and then shifted to valaji, back to hindOLam and bEgaDA and then some other raagam and kApi before coming back to ranjani. I think she was singing the swarams continuously for more than 5 minutes and the continuous shift between raagams was so beautiful. The swarams were neither too fast nor too slow and Karthick’s Ghatam and Vaidyanathan’s Mridangam just added to the blissful experience of listening to Jayashri’s beautiful singing.

More than the violin, which was, anyway, good, it was the mridangam and ghatam that I liked a lot. The soft percussion for nI bhajana, gAnamUrtE and rAsE hari and of course, for those swarams of RTP are some of the moments when I liked their playing the most.

Moving on to things other than music, I liked the choice of colours of sarees of Jayashri and the two girls on tumbura. The dark red and mustard yellow saree of Jayashri, the dark green + red + mustard yellow saree and the red saree of the girls seemed to go so well with the red and ivory coloured stage backdrop in that lighting. Only Karthick’s light blue (sky blue 😕 ) kurta seemed so out of place!