Oscar Thamizhan 'Isaipuyal' AR Rahman News/Updates

Rahman’s performance at Toyota launch in Bangalore

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xju...bangalore_news

ARR INTERVIEW
http://i51.tinypic.com/212tuad.jpg

edhukkuppa ipdi ellaam thookkittu varaanga...
konjam overa've poiduchu...

very unlike ARR and unnecessary :banghead: :sigh2:

Vendaadhadhu idhellam!! :hammer:

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http://www.rediff.com/movies/slide-s...w/20110713.htm

Towards the middle of AR Rahman's concert on Sunday at Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl venue, the city's philharmonic orchestra started to play the theme from Bombay -- by all counts the best score by the Indian composer. It was a magical moment, as nearly 18,000 people in the audience sat in hushed silence under LA's clear sky facing the unlit Hollywood sign.

There was a chill in the air (the weather had been beautiful in LA), and the loud, but sweet and simple sound of flute played by Naveen Kumar, followed by souring violins that filled up the venue, gave me goose bumps.

I just wish the rest of the concert had been this magical. There was a huge build up to the show, and some interesting opening acts that energized the audience -- Karsh Kale playing pieces from his new album Cinema, Rhythms of Rajasthan -- a folk troupe performing Nimbooda Nimbooda, and a local dance group -- Bollywood Step Dancers dancing to Beedi and Let's Have Some Ronak. Many people stood up and began to dance to the upbeat Bollywood songs.

There was hope for a lot more of that when Rahman's performance started. After all, that is what Bollywood shows are about -- singing and dancing to our favorite film songs. Rahman's concerts have always been superior in staging than the other Bollywood shows. The composer himself is the star, as is his music, the singers and those fabulous songs.

But this Sunday's show -- Journey to India -- was very disappointing. During the evening, the composer walked on to the stage a number of times, read prepared introductions to each music segment -- as if he was speaking to an audience that he presumed was not familiar with his music and films. Then each time he would leave the stage, while an American conductor along with a large group of musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, played the compositions from the films.

For a while the staging and format of the evening looked impressive. In the center of the stage was a giant screen (along with four other smaller screens on the sides) projecting images from each film that Rahman introduced -- Lagaan, The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey, Endhiran, Roja, Ravaan, Water, Warriors of Heaven and Earth (the 2003 Chinese period film Rahman composed music for), and the only India-themed film that many Americans seem to have seen -- Slumdog Millionaire. The projection was stunning, crisp and clear and initially everything looked spectacular.

But then the format began to appear dull and repetitive. There was some singing by local singers -- Stanford University's Raagapella and a Cal State Fullerton group, but it was mostly uninspired. Rahman did sing Jai Ho in the end, but by that time the audience was mostly bored. Many had left since it was cold and late. After all Monday was a working day.

Since the big success of Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, Rahman has been trying to develop a strategy to make a big splash in Hollywood and mainstream America. But his two subsequent soundtracks for Couples Retreat and Boyle's 127 Hours -- for which he won two Oscar nominations, did not make much of an impact.

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Exactly my thoughts

does anybody have this song?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKDgq6zi6iE

it gets played in S3E20 of Entourage. It is Rich Skillz - Slow down but i cant find it anywhere.

A.R.RAHMAN wins Vijay Awards 2011 for best music direction
standing ovacation for rahman's mother

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd6M7Qkcjtw

It was paisa vasool for many people: AR Rahman

Though director Shonali Bose has slammed Rahman's Hollywood Bowl show and wanted a refund for her ticket, the Grammy Award winning musician is ecstatic with the response there

Though "Amu"'s director Shonali Bose has slammed AR Rahman's Hollywod Bowl show and even wanted a refund for her ticket and time, the Grammy and Academy award winning musician is happy with the concert.

In his blog, Rahman has already written about the genesis of this show. The musician was in the midst of having finished 26 Jai Ho concerts when he returned to his writing table to do other things in music. Writes Rahman, "When I was in the midst of it, the offer from Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic orchestra playing my music came in and it was hard to resist. So, my conductor Matt Dunkley, my management team GSA and me decided to do the dream show which we always wanted to do in LA. The dream was to play significant orchestral themes from 20 years of my movie soundtracks, most of them were unreleased since the idea of releasing a score separately doesn't exist in India much. Songs dominate, big time :-)"

Elaborating how it all started, Rahman says, "It started 8 years ago with the Birmingham Symphony orchestra, and then last year we did one show in the South Bank of London with the London Philharmonic orchestra playing the music. We wanted to go further in extending the whole experience. Hence, we added new music and (almost) matching film clips playing simultaneously. The Bowl's picnic-like atmosphere, the half moon staring at us kindly, the big screen projecting Rajnikant, Chinese heroes and Aamir Khan was a paisa vasool for many people (I am going by the cheers we got for that :-) ) The LA Philharmonic orchestra along with our very own Naveen (flute) and Asad (sitar) created an unusual blend of a show I had never predicted..."

Though Bose has said that Rahman's role at the show was reduced to that of an announcer, the ace musician defended why he restrained himself from playing or singing too much by saying, "Since the orchestra playing my music was the main thing here, I wanted to restrain myself from playing or singing too much and it was tough not doing anything :-) I had enough time to give descriptions of the musical themes before they played."

In fact so happy is Rahman with the show that he is even keen on bringing it to India. "My mind was constantly thinking - when can I play live to my own people back in India with an orchestra like this? It is such joy, which inspires good things when you have these 100 odd extraordinary musicians, choral singers playing and singing together to create a feeling which is melancholic, complex, invigorating and liberating all at the same time..."

While an overwhelming majority of his fans have eulogized and congratulated him, one lone netizen, Varsha Pc , expressed her discontent on Rahman's social networking site itself saying: " I am disappointed by the show.... Was sad to see that you werent there in center stage for most of the period ."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/e...ow/9268084.cms

Ramu Finally Gets The Rights To Rangeela Song

http://movies.ndtv.com/movie_story.a...DIA&nid=115819

You can hear the reworked version here.

http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/broa...ove-Story.html

Sunidhi Chauhan?? does a wonderful job at recreating Asha ji's magic. Not sure about the md though.

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Originally Posted by Wibha

***The Hollywood Bowl performance was disappointing. The advertising could have been different so the audience would not have been misled! And the Jai Ho song in the end was a sheer disaster. The lady did not know what the he'll she was singing and had a terrible voice and the male singers were equally bad!!!

The title should have been more like "LA Philharmonic performing for AR Rahman songs" or something like that!***

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I'm sorry what did you expect? Were expecting an Indian style concert idolizing their idols and shaking legs on the stage? Seems like they expected an Indian singer to vocalize the songs. Very few seem to have an idea of what Western style orchestra does. It is not their fault you didn't know the musical format. Western style orchestration-Concert has completely different tradition and etiquette.

What the audience really got was a superior orchestration and interpretation of Rahman's songs for the most part. Ok, Jai Ho was not good but there were some amazing gems. All the Slumdog Millionaire's music were great. The ad masuam chase music was exceptional so was the Ode of Slumdog (Seems like completely new take on SDM music rewritten for the concert) The Roja song interpretation was heartfelt and Endhiran was grand in Hollywood style. You cannot even dream of this kind of music live in the near future with the orchestration of this quality.

Generally, it is a travesty to Indian music that lot of us cannot listen to music without visuals. This concert should be experienced without all those visuals but they knew about Indian audience and plugged in those visuals. They took care to sync the music to visuals and it is not easy to sync live to projected visuals, they had a theme and was not random.

Some of us were exposed to Western classical style orchestration by Raja sir even a commoner can appreciate more compared to rest of India. it is their loss if they couldn't appreciate. Also it is disappointing our Indian people were talking loudly, commenting, shouting in the middle of the song and that is ignoring the dance numbers.

Overall, the orchestra did an amazing job. An experience to remember.