Monday, May 01, 2006

classical music

Last night I went to hear Ashwini Bhide Deshpande in concert, accompanied by Seema (Harmonium) and Vishwanath (Tabla) Shirodkar.

It was a pretty good concert although

  • Ashwiniji seemed to have a bit of a cold, though her singing was fantastic
  • Her penultimate song (a jhula) seemed to finish prematurely/abruptly; I think this was due to the tabalji going into a long improv.
  • To my very amateur ears/eyes, it seemed like she got off beat a few times. I feel stupid saying that because she's an extremely accomplished artiste, but I could swear that, a few times, she took the sam on the 13th maatra of a teentaal instead of on the 1st. I was relying both on my counting as well as on the tabalji's left hand playing the tin (with his palm instead of his fingers). Maybe someone can corroborate or shoot me down?


Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. I also ran into my old music teacher, as well as some fellow vocal students and some amazon collegues.

In other news, we moved out of temp. housing and into our own apartment. To my surprise, I have a partial view of Mt. Rainier along with the Seattle skyline. Since we didn't really get to use our new furniture before leaving Bangalore, we spent much of the weekend excitedly unpacking and setting up the place. Unfortunately, we imported some dust from Bangalore along with our boxes and also spent a lot of time sneezing. Played squash yesterday after a long time so now my rear end is in pain. Am starting a 6-day white-water-kayaking class today.

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