Added a page for him with a starter set of recordings.

Click here to go to the page

I added a bunch of concerts of MLV to the page that I had created 9+ months ago. It took me a while to consolidate these concerts from a set that had a lot of duplications, not so great recordings etc – that was a reasonable amount of effort.

Please visit the MLV page and look for “Some more concerts…”.

Add a page for Pandit Jasraj.

Click here to get to the page

Thanks to a friend who asked a question about the tonal quality of N Rajam’s violin, I got motivated to get my act together and create a page with her recordings that I have.

Here is the link to the page.

Created a page for Madurai Mani Iyer

Click here to get to the page

Added a page for Ravikiran

Click here to get to the page

The news about N Ravikrian being the recipient of the award this year, did not raise any eyebrows as was the case in the past few years !! It was expected that he would be awarded with this title and it was only a matter of time and it did happen perhaps sooner than some expected.

A couple of concerts from the 80’s when the instrument was called ‘Gottuvadyam’ are representative of his genius and maturity and which I listen quite frequently are ‘must hear’ in my opinion. And here they are for your enjoyment.

Music Academy – 29th December 1986
with
Kamalakara Rao – Mridangam
K M Vaidyanathan – Ghatam

• taruNam eedammA – gowLipantu
• pAhimAm ratnAcalanAyaka – mukhAri
• nee vADa – sArangA
• ninnu cheppa – mandhAri
• RTP – kAmbhOji
• smara janaka – behAg
• various

Music Academy 28th December 1985
with
Yella Venkateswara Rao – Mridangam
K M Vaidyanathan – Ghatam

I got these recordings directly from Music Academy. In the 80’s they were facilitating the copying of the concerts for a fee and that I gave them the tapes. It would take a couple of months, but it was worth the wait given the quality of the recording and that it was coming from the source 🙂

The announcement of him being the awardee was picked up by my good friend Ravi Balasubramanian in our kitchen, a well established ghtam player, who was visiting us in July. Ravi happens to have played for Ravikiran many times and here is a recording of a concert with Ravi (recording from Ravi).

N Ravikiran – Chitraveena
Ganesh – Chitraveena
Srivatsan – Mridangam
Ravi B – Ghatam

Theophysical Soceity – Dec 2004

The first time I met him was in 1993 when he was visiting Pittsburgh along with K R Ganesh on the mridangam. He gave an excellent concert at the S V Temple – I will check if have the recording and post it on finding the cassettes.

I have updated and reorganized the page containing his concerts. Added many more concerts to the set and I am sure you will enjoy his concerts.
I also started using archive.org as the place for storing and embedding the access to these files. The process is a bit more cumbersome than on Amazon cloud, but with archive.org seeming to have resolved some of their streaming issues (they would stop at random times and moving the position of play would freeze the page) it is another option that seems to work well.
Click here to get to the page.

Last week we experienced a very un-March like weather, meaning beautiful warm sunny days typical to the second half of April. And it was the entire region having such a weather including Washington D C which is famous for the Cherry blossom festival. On Friday evening, we also got word that the cherry blossom blooms would be at their peak on Saturday and we decided that we would make this trip.

Getting to the city on saturday morning was a breeze and after a quick lunch, I started driving towards the main area of attraction which is the Tidal Basin – the crowds we ran into reminded me of the days in Churchgate train station in Mumbai many decades ago and the traffic was no better. It took an hour to find a parking place and walk another 20 minutes to get to the basin which is surrounded by the Cherry Blossom trees which were in full bloom and without a question was a beautiful sight as you can see from a few pictures below.

On one side, you have the Jefferson Memorial and as you see from there you get a view of the federal government buildings, the Washington monument, the mall that is lined with the museums and of course zillions of people milling around enjoying the bllom and the great weather we had on that day. Some pictures in around the memorial.

And as we walked around the basic, we got to see the Roosevelt memorial, one that have not had a chance to see before; somehow we missed this one which happens to be slightly off the main path that one takes around the mall. The memorial reminds the viewer of the Great Depression era, the struggles the people went through and the war of course. Some pictures from this area. An interesting one is the bright copper tone of Teddy’s index finger 🙂

As we walked further round the basin, we got to the Rev. Martin Luther King memorial which is a recent addition. The memorial is quite an interesting one and it took some time to understand the concept (at least in my head which could be completely wrong). The quote “Out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope’, leads me to believe the hope is the middle piece with Dr. King carved on it, moved out of the mountain of despair – I am yet to confirm my interpretation!!

Needless to say, my wife and I enjoyed the views and sights, weather and the awakening of the plants that will turn this barren and leafless landscape into myriad of colors and hues from the flowers, the pollen and allergies that goes with it!! Here are some random shots from our walk around that includes mug shots of us too 🙂

The selfie was taken with my SLR camera and not a phone !! No selfie stick for me 😉