Just back from a concert at Bharath Kalachar, Chennai on 29th September 2006. I was pleasantly surprised (and a tad nervous) when popular musician Sri Vijay Siva walked into the concert and stayed for a while (till just before the main piece).

nirmal narayanan (brother of sandeep narayanan who is one of sanjay subramaniam's shishyas) accompanied me on the mridanga, jayanti kesav on the violin and narasimham on the ghata.

Here goes the song list:

1) varnam - begada - intha chala - adi - veena kuppier

2) theliyalEru rAma - dhEnuka - adi - thyAgarAja (S)

3) rAma nee vAdu konduvO - kalyAni - adi tisra gathi - thyAgarAja (R)

4) chinna nAde nA - kalAnidhi - adi - thyAgarAja

5) sri rAjagOpala - sAveri  - adi - muthuswami dikshitar (R,N,S)

6) bruhi mukundethi - kurinji - adi - sadasiva brahmendra.

it was a 1.5 hour concert and i choose to sing saveri as the main piece. the interesting thing that i tried was to sing neraval at "murArE sri vidyA rAja harE" instead of the usual "dheeragraganya...". the neraval spot was pretty interesting though one needs to sing it very carefully - else it might get repetitive in my opinion. actually, i think any neraval point with an eduppu in the thara sthayi must be handled carefully.

singing chinna nAde nA in front of vijay siva made me feel rather jittery because after all this kriti belongs to their school !!!

overall, as always, an immense learning experience...at the end of every kutcheri i am reminded of the thyagaraja kriti swara raga sudha where thyagaraja emphatically says "..sapta svara grahamula gurutE mOkSamurA..". No wonder, titans like MSS and MDR would experience such bliss on stage because they were amongst the blessed souls for whom every swara and every gamaka would be perfectly in shruti.