The Auditorium was packed with music lovers. The musical rain was showered on the audience for about three hours non-stop. It was a wonderful feeling to have been part of this musical rain and I thoroughly enjoyed.
Smt.Sukanya Ramgopal is the founder of the Group "Shtree Thaal Tharang". She is a renowned Ghatam Artiste and has mastered the art over the last 35 years. She is a disciple of Ghatam Wizard Padmasri Vikku Vinayakaram. She performed with several ghatam artistes wherein each artiste played the ghatam with a different pitch. This prompted her to think of a unique idea of playing several ghatams of different pitch all by herself. She transformed this idea and conceptualised the "Ghata Tharang". She gave a few solo performances by creating the melody with the six ghatams of different pitch. She further embelished this idea by forming a group in 1995 "Sthree Thaal Tharang" with women artistes playing the Veena, Violin, Mridangam and Morsing.
Smt.Sukanya played the Ghatam, she also played the "Ghata Tharang" with six ghatams each set on a different shruti and she also did the vocal percussion Konnakkol. It was a real treat for the eyes and ears to watch her perform. Her hands were moving very swiftly across the six ghatams and the melody that she produced was truly amazing. It really showed the years and years of practice and the mastery that she has developed on the instrument. This level of perfection and mastery is possible only with utmost devotion and love for music.
The Group comprises of "5 Star" artistes namely Smt.Sukanya Ramgopal on Ghatam, Ghata Tharang and Konnakkol; Smt.Yogavandana on Veena; Smt.Soumya Ramachandran on Violin; Smt.Ranjani Venkatesh on Mridangam and Smt.Bhagyalakshmi Krishna on Morsing.
Each of them is a Star on their own and can perform a concert in the lead. The mastery of the art and the ease with which they perform is a real treat to watch. The 5 Stars performed exceedingly well in their "thani avartanam" and as a group when they performed together they were simply awesome. These five artistes where shining bright all through the three hours of concert. I am very fortunate that I got the opportunity to listen to this concert live in Dubai.
If you have not watched this group in a live concert you could see a sample of how they perform on this video which was taken in Bangalore:
If they perform in your town please do not miss to watch the concert of this great group.
T.P.Anand
Dubai, U.A.E.
19th June 2012
Lovely.
ReplyDeleteLoved it ...
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