The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and the Veena Foundation, New Delhi, in association with Narada Gana Sabha, Chennai, and Sri S.G.B.S Trust, Bangalore, will host a unique dawn to dawn event across the globe on September 26 and 27. Scores of stalwarts will rub shoulders with students to resuscitate the ancient Indian instrument and highlight its significance through the Vishwa Veena Yagna.
The dawn to dawn event is the brainchild of V. Raghurama Ayyar, secretary general, the Veena Foundation, and an accomplished veena player himself.
The event will be preceded by the first ever Veena Navarathri, a nine-day event beginning September 17, to be held in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai and Sonapani besides other international cities such as Melbourne, Tokyo and London. The event has been celebrated for the past five years since the Veena Foundation was set up by the late Dr. L. M. Singhvi and V. Raghurama Ayyar.
“The Veena Navarathri is a unique and momentous celebration of the ancient acoustic innovation. Central to our heritage of music, the veena represents the confluence of the science of musical sounds and the Indian philosophy of harmony and tranquillity. It is the quintessential symbol of the musical and spiritual traditions of India – an acoustic vehicle for spiritual voyaging,” says Ayyar.
Spiritual symbol
Padmavathy Ananthagopalan and Jayanthi Kumaresh will play on September 17, at Chennai's Narada Gana Sabha.
B. Kannan, festival coordinator, TN chapter, the Veena Foundation, will perform on Saraswati veena on September 21 along with singer Sowmya.
N. Ravikiran will play the Chitra veena, while Pt. Janaradan Mitta will play the sitar to add to the string harmony in Chennai on September 22. Ayyar will play the Saraswati veena in Chennai on the concluding day of the Vishwa Veena Navarathri.
Ustad Bahauddin Daggar will usher in the Navarathri from the foothills of Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh. At the Unnati Centre in Bangalore, Suma Sudhindra, Shanti Rao and Revati Sadasivam will play the South Indian veena. In Hyderabad, Emani Kalyani and her disciples will participate in the inaugural session.
Srikumaran Thampi, Ramkumar and other artistes will represent the Kerala tradition at Veena Sangeet Centre in Thiruvananthapuram. Kalayani and Bhagavati Mani will play in Mumbai.
Overseas, the Iyer Brothers, Ramnath and Gopinath will start the programme in Melbourne. Yuko Matobha will play in Tokyo. Geetha Swaminathan will perform in Denmark and Sivasakti Silvanesan and artistes of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan will perform in London.
Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt will play in San Diego, while the the Karaikkudi tradition will be represented by Vidya Chandramouli and her disciples in Portland.
