Tracking a single

Violinist Embar S. Kannan takes his string story forward through the tech route

July 21, 2014 06:33 pm | Updated 06:33 pm IST - Chennai

Embar Kannan with Deepika and Prithvi

Embar Kannan with Deepika and Prithvi

His serene demeanour on the concert platform conceals his sense of musical adventure. Embar Kannan may be known more as an accompanist in the Carnatic circuit, but in the recent past he has been trying to perceive sound on his own creative terms.

Despite his skills being honed by a purist-violinist like A. Kanyakumari after being trained by Subbanna Bhagavatar and Vittal Ramamurthy, Kannan preferred to engage with the strings of his violin more as an interpreter than as a mere performer. He enjoyed being a fiddler who was also a juggler…balancing tunes and styles. So, even as he explored the realms of ragas with ace vocalists, he reserved his space in the orchestral dream team of composer-wizard Ilaiyaraaja.

Continuing with his simultaneous existence in diverse settings, he is just out from a classical rehearsal and driving to Karthik Raja’s studio even as he talks about his new single with singer V. Deepika and pianist Prithvi Chandrasekhar. It has been posted on YouTube and has generated enough curiosity. The single, in raag Bhatiyar, stands out for its manicured passages and clarity of texture and tone.

“It’s a slightly modified pallavi that I had composed some time back. I had shared it with my niece Deepika, who wanted to include it in one of her performances. But she couldn’t do so as she did not get enough time to practise. Recently, during a recording at Prithvi’s studio, she rendered a few lines from it and he decided to record it as a single,” says Kannan, who is also the lead artiste of the band, Cross Roads.

“I have realised you have to stretch to keep your art in shape too,” he smiles, explaining the need to be flexible in the quicksand of change.

It’s not that an artiste cannot decide on a genre, when he/she redefines the limits of style. It’s the desire to look beyond the treaded path that pushes them to come up with novel ways of expression. “It’s extremely important to stay viable and current. I still love to play traditional compositions, the essence of my twist-in-the tune journey. It’s not about making a separation; it’s about the freedom to straddle and mingle,” he explains.

A reason why he launched his five-member ensemble Cross Roads, a musical travelogue through which Kannan brings together his influences, flavours of Irish, Chinese, Norwegian, Swedish, Hungarian, African, Brazilian and Arabian music and insights into Indian and western classical pieces.

“I would describe these experiments as interesting stopovers in my cultural cruise. A way to rephrase the repertoire of my strings,” sums up Kannan.

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