Maestro ilaiyaraaja news & titbits

**wizzy** · 30th April 2012, 10:52 PM

difficult job to follow up on Plum gaaru's post so doing a quick bullet points on the show..pliss not to expect technicalities on the music front..for that listen to the man himself at the end of this post.

-We planned to meet on or about 5pm to beat the queue and as my luck would have it my vehicle clanked and had to hop on two vehicles to get to the venue.

-KV and his band of friends drove all the way from Bang so that he could attend the show..taking devotion to music to uncharted levels

-Plum gaaru was the first to reach the venue and promptly updated the status in hub*

-I had visualized Plum to be Mr.Grumpy guy but much to my/our utter surprise he was no where close to being one

-KV too might have harbored similar doubts hence popped the proxy ref. and Plum had to retort to that post* to proclaim his identity

-After all the ice-breaking chats/kisu-kisu on things related to music/movies/hub/celeb spotting we were probably the last men left stranded in the queue.

-to our horror we found that queue which we were busy attending to was only to get the tickets verified and there was yet another queue running parallel to enter the auditorium.

- that called for command/control so we had to literally barge in and ended up with seats for which we ought to have paid twice the amount

- found out this was Plum's first one-one with the god..was hoping he wouldn't faint with the Vishwaroopa darisanam with piano et al.
- the darisanam was at 6.45pm to a thundering applause and inexplicably it was nerve wracking exp.

for me..can't think anyone invoking similar pheelings.

- Bhava started the show with 'Janani' as a dedication to her mom and did a fairly competent job when pitted against her erstwhile stage performances.

- Anil Srinivasan(pianist+host) took it over from then and quizzed on how many peeps present were the bhakhts

and warmed up by playing some bgms to a rapturous response and then rambled on what it takes to be a genius and why IR is special vis-a-vis other composers.

-'Do anything' was first track to played..when Ballesh took over..the audience took it onto themselves to down it with their applause

-All this while we thot the kid in the first row of the string section was Ambi Subramaniam who later performed the duo with him.

-Ambi started with HTNI..nervy start..took a while to settle down.

-Two thumbs up the guys on the bass/drums

Jarring notes

- The guy on control knob must have been a noob..he had no clue about acoustics and pushed string section volume too low or high..same with the keys and we couldn't hear flute in 'Do anything'

- the intros to the tracks could have been done better..we later found out the CD from which they took notes had the track names goofed up hence the turbulence.

- seems Arulmozhi has given this concert a miss

- ellam therinja ekambarams torture

soduking(snapping)/foot-tapping/whistling/ringtones and all the means you could imagine which could deter our listening exp.