Haven't posted here for a while, thought I could write about the Imperial concert Megamaalai on Tuesday. After playing in the successful Divali show in Royal Albert Hall, I was wondering when I was going to play flute again. Ramiya asked me at the end of December if I could play and I instantly said 'yes please!'
After a week of rehearsals, I turned up at Hammersmith Palais at 9am for the sound checks. But, with the usual Tamil late timing, we started at half ten. I looked at the brochure to see when my 2 acts were performing. The 1st one, called 'Bhava Ragam Thalam', was actually the opening to the show. The 2nd, called 'Fuse-it' was straight after the interval.
Quite a few people looked tired so when I was on stage, I tried to liven things up a little. Instead of playing a traditional carnatic song for the Bhava sound check, I did a short rendition of the Popeye sailor theme and it seemed to do the trick. There was laughter and smiles everywhere. The Fuse check was even funnier. Roshan, on the drum kit, was moaning to the engineers about his sound quality, and it turned out that he could control it.
I went out for lunch with the Fuse crew minus Roshan, Mayuran (vocal) and Trish (keyboard). They joined us later and Mayuran seemed very merry. We heard him going through part of a song, and it was clear that he had been drinking. As funny as it was hearing him, we were a little worried. So we did a run through and it was near perfect. At half six, the Palais doors were opened and an hour later, the show was about to get started.
I was waiting backstage with the Bhava crew and the comperes (Harry - an old Habs friend, and Priya). And surprise, surprise there was a big delay. I managed to calm a few nerves by playing some random tunes like Star Wars and The Great Escape. In between, Eason and Ahilan kept asking me to play Sa (the base note in Carnatic music) to help them tune their percussion instruments. 'How long does it take guys? Your pitch is fine!'
After half an hour, we finally went on stage and the show was under way. Our act comprised two dancers (Sai and Kumaran) performing Bharata Natyam (a traditional type of South Indian dance). The music was provided by vocal (Sindhu, Indhu and Anthony), violin (Ramiya), veena (Danusha) and myself on flute, with Ahilan, Eason and Baz on percussion. We played samples of Om Nama Shivaya which is a carnatic piece and Raa Raa, a song from the recent film Chandramukhi. Our performance was brilliant, so a good start to the show.
I watched the other acts in the 1st half and there were a few which stood out. One was a group of dancers performing to the songs Men in Black (Will Smith) and Remember the time (Michael Jackson). Another act, called Mortal Kombat, showed a martial arts fight with fantastic co-ordination. By the end of the 1st half, I was backstage getting ready for Fuse-it. Roshan gave a quick ‘team talk’ and we went on stage. Here’s a list of our planned songs.
1) Suraj Hua Maddham (from the Bollywood blockbuster Kabe Kush). Vocal: Indhu, Mayuran.
2) Cry me a river (Justin Timberlake). Vocal: Kumar
3) Oh Sukumari (from Anniyan). Vocal: Anthony, Indhu, Mayuran.
4) Kumbida Pona. Vocal: Anthony, Mayuran.
5) Jamming i.e. literally freestyling. Whatever tunes Trish thought of, I’d play along.
For Cry me a river I took the wrong flute and played the intro notes wrong, so I just left out the 1st four bars and joined in at the chorus. Hopefully not many people noticed my mistake! Towards the end of Kumbida Pona, part of Roshan's drum kit fell off and he had to hold it together. So we couldn’t do our jam which was a real shame as we were all so excited about it. Although in the end, it was a great act.
The rest of the 2nd half was pretty good, the best of which was a stand-up comedy, partly ruined by some random guys shouting and swearing. We all stayed in Palais for the after party which wasn’t too bad either. I ended up crashing at Sarayu’s place with Harry and his Imperial mates. I nearly cracked my ribs laughing at the drunken antics they got up to. A truly memorable day and a half.
Here's 2 random sites with some pics from the show.
Fatsarrazi
Imperial
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