|
|
|
LearnQuest Academy Music
Meet begins on April 9
By Sudha Jagannathan
CHENNAI, March 26: The Waltham-based music school LearnQuest
Academy is gearing to present Music Conference 2008. The five-day
conference will commence on April 9 and last till April 13.
The conference will be held at multiple locations. The Music
Conference 2008 is being co-sponsored by the Museum of Fine
Arts of Boston and MITHAS at MIT, a leading music organization
that presents Indian classical music concert series in the Boston
area. |
 |
The conference will have lecture
demonstrations, a film show and concerts. It will feature well-known
artistes from India. It will feature a few local artistes as
well.
The artists scheduled to perform include luminaries such as
Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, Dr. Prabha Atre, Pt. Partha Chatterjee,
Pt. Anindo Chatterjee, Ustad Shujat Khan, Pts. Gundecha Brothers,
Pt. Prabhakar Karekar, Debashish Bhattacharya, Ronu Majumdar
and Purbayan Chatterjee from the world of Hindustani music.
From the Carnatic music side, vidwan O. S. Tyagarajan, Vidushi
Aruna Sairam, Shashank Subramnyam, Jayanthi Kumaresh, Abhishek
Raghuram, H. N. Bhaskar and Mysore Srikanth will give concerts.
The inaugural concert on April 9, titled Guitar Gayan (Singing
Guitar), by Master Guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya & Group
will be held at the MFA. The concert titled Confluent Winds,
Triveni 2008 by the group Natraj led by Phil Scarff with special
guest artistes Shashank (Carnatic flute) and Steve Gorn (Hindustani
flute) and a film show will be held at the MIT Stata Center
on April 10. The week-end concerts, titled Cascades of Melody
& Rhythm, will be held at the McDevitt School in Waltham
from April 11 to April 13.
"Humans are born with
five senses - sight, taste, hearing, touch and smell. The ambience
of this five-day music festival with beautiful decorations,
wonderful live music, vendors selling food, audio and video
CDs of various artistes and colourfully dressed audience is
sure to satisfy all the five senses,’’ a release
said.
“The music conference had a very nice
mix of both Hindustani and Carnatic concerts. The chosen length
of each concert was just perfect since this probably was the
first time patrons of Hindustani music got an opportunity to
listen to Carnatic music and vice versa,” the release
quoted Kumaresh of the violin duo Ganesh-Kumaresh as saying
after their performance in last year’s conference, It
all started four years ago when a few music loving friends,
all having some acquaintance or the other with LearnQuest Academy
of Music, the Waltham-based music school, casually suggested
an all-night music festival featuring great artistes. The idea
took a definite shape a few days later. Subsequently, it was
decided to have a music festival ending each day by 11 pm. Thus,
the first LearnQuest Music Conference was born in 2006, the
very first of its kind where both Hindustani and Carnatic music
concerts were presented along with a very special segment called
the “Music Triveni” featuring Jazz, Hindustani and
Carnatic music together.
|
 |
LearnQuest Academy of Music is a non-profit
educational institution devoted to providing formal instruction
in Indian classical music, both in Hindustani and Carnatic
styles. It was founded in December 1994. It offers curriculum-
based instruction in several disciplines of Indian classical
music by highly accomplished, qualified, devoted and dedicated
teachers. It also organizes workshops and music camps
by artistes visiting from India. |
|
The first music conference in 2006
that featured well-known artistes from India and also local
artists was a big success. Encouraged by this success the following
year, the Music Conference 2007 was extended to a two-and-a-half-day
festival starting on a Friday evening and ending at mid night
on Sunday. Among the Hindustani artistes who performed last
year were Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (Mohanveena), Rashid Khan, Sanjeev
Abhyankar (Vocal), Sahid Parvez, Sugato Nag (Sitar), Satish
Vyas (Santoor), Swapan Chaudhury, Anuradha Pal, Subhen Chatterjee
(Tabla), George Ruckert and Puspen Dey (Sarod). From the Carnatic
music side, Ganesh, Kumaresh, Ganesh Kumar, H.N. Bhaskar (Violin),
T.H. Subashchandran (Ghatam), Pravin Godkhini and Anoor Ananthakrishnan
(Flute) were among those who gave performance.
The Music Triveni, a Carnatic, Hindustani and Western music
ensemble, featured Boston area artistes K. V. S. Vinay, Suresh
Mathur, Shuchita Rao, Phil Kaplan, Sven Larson, David Jamrog
and Jon Proudman.
For further information, please visit:
www.learnquest.org/conference2008
Email: conference2008@learnquest.org
Phone: 781 - 891 - 8535
Post your comments
Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail
|
|
|
|
|
