Commentary on Activities for Concert in Melbourne 2003 presented by Surashree
The Melbourne visit over 10-12 October went very well. Surashree,
a group of five Marathi families, have presented vocal concerts
before but this was their first instrumental presentation.
Travelling with Panditji as tour manager, I was able to
at last meet Sanjay Bhide, one of Surashree's members. I
had talked to him many times about a concert when he was
president of the Maharashtra Mandal. He worked diligently
at that time towards a concert but when he vacated his role
as president arrangements could not be completed. He was
very happy to be part of this visit.
It was a wonderful concert and greatly appreciated by all.
Beginning the concert with a stirring version of Yaman,
Panditji followed this with Marwa in a rhythm cycle, which
he demonstrated to the attentive audience before commencing
the raga, and then he played a delicate interpretation of
Kahmaj. As an encore and on request from the audience the
evening ended with a semi-classical piece. The young tabla
player, Hemant Kumar gave a splendid and nicely balanced
performance. His elder brother came back stage after the
show and knew all about Panditji's recent concert for INFOSYS
in Japan, as he is the Australian chief executive for this
IT company.
We also met several people from Panditji's 1992 visit including
Melbourne's most senior lady vocalist, Mrs. Sheela Sharma
who once again played tanpura as she had done with Panditji
at his concert during the 1992 Australian Festival of Asian
of Music. The venue was at Carwatha College, where the theatre
had excellent facilities including a sound system, enthusiastically
installed and operated by Ravi Dhayagude that gave perfect
acoustics. About 150 people attended.
On Sunday morning we listened to the soulful prayers offered
by Panditji through his sitar at the Baronia Ganesh temple
in the picturesque Dandelong Ranges foothills. Just before
his playing we all were invited to watch the closing ceremonies
of a puja for Ganesh so the interior was heavily laden with
smoke when Panditji began with a 'chant' on sitar. One of
Melbourne's leading Indian community dignitaries, Dr. Raman
Marar attended and organized some refreshments later in
a sunny outdoor section of the temple grounds.
Then it was up Mountain Highway to a summit section in the
Dandelong forest with Vhilas and Maduri Kamtikar from Surashree.
Here we fed all kinds of brightly coloured parrots from
our hands. We set off on a walk along a path through the
forest but we had to pull up after a while otherwise we
would have been walking for hours on end. We returned to
the city and enjoyed some South Indian lunch, then continued
on to Dr. Marar's for a pleasant meeting. It was great to
see how kind and thoughtful all the families in the Surashree
group treated Chandrakant and myself. They were enthralled
by his stories, enjoyed listening to his Marathi and Hindi
repartee and laughed a lot. Everyone, including the children
joined in. It was apparent they were all lifted onto a plane
of melodies and musical rhythms that were part of their
lives and very much in their souls.
