Chennai Music Season 07 - Report # 1

My Discovery of Chennai Music Season 07 (on Dec. 24, 07)
The Tamil month of Margazhi (மார்கழி மாதம்) in Chennai is synonymous with classical music, the world knows and I have known it too. But I have never been in to it, not when I grew up here nor when I returned back a few years back. But I discovered the music season on its waning days just a few days back and it was merely happenstance. Wondering what is he talking about..? read on...

Early this week, under duress from kids we made an impromptu decision to head out ECR Road for a movie and dinner. But the Chennai traffic had other plans for us. Being the Christmas eve evening, roads were unusually congested and we were stuck near RK Nagar for over an hour. With no progress in sight, I took an executive decision to take the next available turn and go wherever the traffic would allow us to. That's when eureka stuck, why not try a music season concert. We never been to one.. so why not. None of us had any clue as to what is happening where, so decided to head to the nearest one which happened to be Image Auditorium in MRC Nagar.

I was thrilled to be going to my first concert of any music season, but that was short lived. We were greeted by an empty auditorium complex and had to search hard for the program announcement. We eventually did find an announcement for a SriLankan folk dance. Since the overwhelming majority voted against it, I resumed my chauffeur duties again to try our luck at Petachi Auditorium, which is hardly a few kms away. As we neared the auditorium, I had a feeling of deja vu and was right, a dance program was on the cards here as well. By then, we were all grumpy and hungry and I wasn't ready to get back on the wheels again. But, after much persuasion I relented and drove to Narada Gana Sabha which is just a few hundred meters from Petachi.

Murphy's law stuck us again and it was another dance program at Narada Gana Sabha as well but by a well known artist Shobana. I put the car keys down and refused to do anymore Sabha hopping and headed straight towards the Sabha cafeteria for some decent food.


Thus we ended up going to the dance program by Shobana. It was a full house and we had hard time finding seats together and ended up sitting separately. Rajesh Vaidya was on Veena and was very pleasant to hear.


I am no dance or carnatic vocal connoisseur so I will not even attempt to say anything about the performance. Regardless of the first day experience, I resolved to go for few more concerts this year and I did. In the coming days, I will post on them.

Lesson from day #1
Check Schedules and plan ahead- Spur of the moment decisions don't work. Check schedules and select the concert to go. There is plenty of options available, but need to plan in advance.