Posted on 09 December 2011

On day 2, the audience was spell bound to hear the jugalbandi of Ronu Majumdar and Kadri Gopalnath. Their jugalbandi at the 59th Sawai Gandharva Bhimsen Mahotsava was applauded by an audience comprising of more than 10,000 music lovers. It was a rare combination of two music styles: Carnatic and Hindustani.

Ronu Majumdar renderings on the flute with Kadri Gopinath, was well matched. Gopalnath also attuned his saxophone to create magic with the other maestro. They played raag Hansdhwani. The two wind instruments that were played together lived up to the expectations of the music festival. Although it is first time that Gopalnath performed in this music festival, Majumdar has played in this Mahotsav several times in the past.

They were accompanied on the stage with well known mrudangam maestro B. Hari Kumar and ace tabla player Ramdas Palsule. Together they complimented the jugalbandi to give a perfect rhythm to the performance. They got their chance to prove their excellence to the audience and received appreciation from the audience as well.

After capturing the attention of the audience with a perfect presentation of raag Hansdhwani, they performed raag Chandrakauns. While they were playing the wind instruments, the audience felt Gopalnath’s saxophone sometimes seemed to take charge and at that moment, the flute of Majumdar took charge and lead the performance; just then both their instruments blended together to render the delicacy of the raag that they were rendering.

After presenting the two raags, Gopalnath and Majumdar performed a couple of devotional compositions of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, namely “Tirth vitthal kshetra vitthal” and “Payo ji maine Ram ratan dhan payo”.

On day 2 of the music fest, the audience also witnessed the debut performance of Mahesh Kale. He seemed to perform effortlessly on various songs based on raag Madhuwati. He preformed “Mere sai kawan nagariya basaye ho,” in ‘wilambit khayal’ and “Shiv aaj madhawant balawant yogi” in the ‘drut khayal’. He also performed raag Din ki Puriya and a devotional song “Abir gulal udhalit rang”. He was accompanied by ace artists Bharat Kamat on tabla and Sudhir Nayak on harmonium. What makes this youngster different from others is that he was based in US and holds an MS degree in multimedia.

The stage seemed to be honored by the presence of the veteran artist M Balamuralikrishna. He performed at the Sawai festival after a long gap of eight years. He was accompanied by Raghavandra Rao on the violin and T. Vaidyanathan on mrudungam. Veera Raghavan provided vocal support to him. He started his performance by presenting raag Mahati that he had composed himself.

The veteran vocalist from the Kirana gharana, Shaila Datar presented raag Purvi. She sang “Dilliya nagariya kaise jaaon” in ‘wilambit kyayal’ and “Dhanya dhanya dulahan bhagan tero” in ‘drut khayal’. She also sang a very popular number “Krishna murari binati karat narahari” that is based on raag Mishra Dhani. In the end, she sang a bhajan by Sant Namdeo, “Amrutahuni goad naam tujhe devaa.” Sameer Puntambekar on harmonium and Prasad Joshi on pakhwaj complimented her performance.