Sarangi’s association with Oli Chamber Concert: For the love of music…

Sarangi’s association with Oli Chamber Concerts began in March 2012. It has been a wonderful opportunity to support an interesting movement – to revive the magic of chamber concerts in Chennai. This association began with “Manickam Vairam” – a thematic concert by Sumitra Vasudev hosted at the Rasvihar premises (also the home of Sarangi).

We were indeed happy that Sarangi and Oli were able to collaborate again to present “Thaamarai” – a thematic Carnatic music concert by Nisha Rajagopalan, accompanied by Padma Shankar and Shertalai Anantakrishnan, hosted again at Rasvihar on 29th April 2012.

The concert was a veritable treat : as Nisha presented compositions that used words, verbal imagery of kamala, thaamarai, karakamala, saroja and so on in varying contexts of ‘bhakti’, ‘mukti’ and ‘kaavya’. For the music-lovers who were present, the concert was a pleasant and memorable experience, allowing one to savour some rare kritis and sample a different concert format.

The next Oli Chamber Concert sponsored by Sarangi was held on 6th of May featured Sangeetha Sivakumar, accompanied by V V S Murari and Melakkaveri Balaji. This event too was hosted at Rasvihar and proved to be a veritable musical treat for all those present. A seasoned musician, Sangeetha shared that performing in a mic-less concert was a very refreshing experience. Performing with mikes would require the artists to continuously and consciously ensure audio/amplification quality and balance and she shared that this was an interesting variation.

Reviews and videos of these Oli Chamber Concerts are being made available through Margazhi.org.

** Margazhi.org is a platform for the culturally conscious. It is a sponsored initiative of Sarangi – the Kanjivaram Sari Store.