Millennium Music Foundation (MMF) is getting the dream trio Hariharan, Stephen Devassy and Manoj George together to Bengaluru for Tunes 2014 for World Aids Day. The concert is on November 30, 6 pm onwards at St. John’s Medical College Ground. K.P. Ranjith of Bangalore-based MMF says their mission is to spread the message of peace and harmony through music.
If it is Hariharan, Stephen and Manoj what could you expect on stage? The trio believes that it is tricky to have a ‘concert-package’ ready, as most of such synthesis and blending are spontaneous inspirations on stage.
If it is ghazals or something associated with a raga, the three will pitch in to form some scintillating Indian music melodies that go beyond the classical interests, they say.
Hariharan, son of Carnatic vocalists Alamelu and Anantha Subramani Iyer initially learnt from his mother, but had developed a keen ear for the Hindustani genre during his childhood in Mumbai. As a teenager, he was inspired with Urdu and ghazals when he first heard Mehdi Hassan. As he listened to stars as Jagjit Singh, he wanted to be trained in Hinndustani from Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. His unique rendition of ghazals, bringing in a marked intonation of a style entwined with raga flourishes speaks of his 13-hour classical music practice that he is said to have followed as he grew up.
While Hariharan went on to have nearly 40 ghazal albums to his credit tuning most of them himself, his film career saw him singing several hundreds of songs for Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi and Bengali.
Pianist, composer and arranger, Stephen Devassy, born in Kerala, took a degree from Trinity College, London. The incomparable teenager completed his 8th grade piano at 16. With a major break for a music orchestration for an album at the age of 18, Stephen went on to accompany Hariharan on keyboard on his European tour and later violin maestro L. Subramanian at the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival, and the rest as they say is history.
Stephen composed for Sacred Chants of Kosmic Music which has a background of Western music, Sanskrit slokas, mantras and verses from the Upanishads. He has also assisted Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan with his album of Christmas carols, Breaking Barriers .
Manoj George, a film composer and violinist is best known to the Kannada world as the composer for the 2008 Kannada flick Athmiya directed by Govindraj. Recently, Manoj has the honour of being the ‘Only Indian violinist’ to be the brand ambassador for “Roland Corporation” Japan, and “Cantini electric violins”, Italy.
