Two Concerts

The past two weekends were musically busy in Austin, the "live music capital of the world".  And I don't mean the ACL Music Festival, which of course was the hot big-ticket item in town.  Let me talk instead about two other concerts that I attended, both "fusion" experiences in a sense.

Mompou, Takemitsu, Dvorak, and Bach (on guitar)

The first was a classical guitar concert on October 3rd by the legendary Japanese guitarist Kazuhito Yamashita, the opening concert of the 25th season of the Austin Classical Guitar Society, a wonderful organization on the Austin classical music scene that both organizes concerts and engages in educational outreach.  I walked into the Austin ISD PAC auditorium to the strains of the Austin Classical Guitar Youth Orchestra playing an arrangement of the Villanesca from Granados' Spanish Dances.  The hall itself is acoustically marvellous: I was able to hear every note of Yamashita-san's playing, without any amplification, sitting up in the balcony.

While I listen to classical guitar, I do not follow the genre closely, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the program: Mompou, Takemitsu, and arrangements by Yamashita of the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony and of Bach's second violin partita.  Mompou is an underrated 20th century Spanish composer (listen to his Variations on Chopin's A-major Prelude to understand why), and his Suite Compostelana was written for none other than Segovia; Toru Takemitsu is, of course, the premier face of modern classical music in Japan (the performance of From Me Flows What You Call Time for five percussionists and orchestra remains unforgettable both visually and musically); the Dvorak and the Bach are staples of the classical repertoire.

Yamashita is a fascinating musician to watch.  Remarkably, he did not speak a single word throughout the performance - he did not even announce the encore that he played (a composition by his daughter, as I found out later).  His intensity and concentration are something out of this world. It is beyond my ability to comment on his musicianship and technical brilliance other than to say that they are on par with the level of virtuosity one associates with the likes of Vilayat Khan and Ali Akbar Khan. And I have never seen anyone hold the instrument in so many positions while playing, all the way from vertical (like a cello) to horizontal (almost like a sarod).

And yet, for all the virtuosity, I came away with a sense of detachment.  I marveled at his reduction of a symphonic work to a solo guitar (comparable only to the similar transcriptions by Liszt), of his mapping of a bowed instrument to a plucked one. I was in awe of his control of the sound textures in Takemtisu's Folios, his effortless speed in the Bach partita. I saw the guitarists in the audience going wild over the performance. But not once during the concert did I get the goosebumps that epitomize the emotional appeal of a truly great performance.  Perhaps he was having an off day. Perhaps I wasn't ready to understand his greatness (just as I still don't "get" Mahler). Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

I bought the two-CD set of his transcription of the complete Bach cello suites. (I wanted to get them autographed by him, but he never showed up to sign CDs.) I've listened to them over and over, and compared them to Segovia's recordings. The man clearly is a genius. I still mostly have only a superficial intellectual appreciation of his greatness (although the prelude of the sixth suite did give me goosebumps).

Maybe Bach is too cerebral. I need to listen to his transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition. And I hope that ACGS brings him back soon.

Crosscurrents: A Musical Bridge East to West

The second concert on October 11th was the much-awaited grand finale of the 24th year of the Indian Classical Music Circle of Austin, Ustad Zakir Hussain's indo-jazz fusion quintet: Louiz Banks (piano), Sanjay Divecha (guitar), Shankar Mahadevan (vocals), Dave Holland (string bass), anchored by Zakir-ji himself on a eclectic drumset fashioned out of multiple tablas (tuned to different pitches), other varieties of drums, cymbals, etc. The concert was held at Riverbend Center, a hall capable of seating over 2,300 that was packed to capacity.

I first saw Zakir play live in 1983 at IIT Kharagpur, and I have seen him in concert many times since then. His percussive wizardry is the stuff of legend and was on full display at the concert, along with his delicious extemporaneous repartee ("The Zakir Hussain Standup Comedy Hour", as he described it) in which he coolly despatched screaming protestations of love from certain members of the audience, handled complaints about echoes from another section ("you're getting to hear everything at least twice"), and pleaded for "equal TLC" as the crowd went wild at Shankar Mahadevan's name.

Every musician of the quintet is a star in his own right, and they came together as a coherent constellation repeatedly during the course of the sets they played. Dave Holland's bass playing is rightfully legendary: bassists are used to pizzing, but I've rarely seen such pizzicato as he put on display.  Or as much thumb-position playing, for that matter.  The opening piece of the second half, with Holland and Hussain gloriously jamming to a seven-beat rhythmic cycle, will remain long in my memory. Divecha came into the limelight in the delicate ballad that he played exquisitely, also in the second half. (I do disagree with his choice of headgear, though: his woolen hat looked awkward, not cool.) Banks was rock-solid and brilliant in every piece, although I personally could have done with fewer glissandos.

The compositions were a blend of jazz, Indian classical, and Bollywood - the key word being 'blend'. While many of the pieces were structured as more-or-less conventional jazz numbers, the musicians were always stepping outside their traditional boxes in unexpected ways. It was certainly unusual (but quite exhilarating) to hear Shankar Mahadevan render a Swati Tirunal kriti in Ragam Simhendra Madhyamam with harmonic accompaniment from Louiz Banks; I quietly chuckled when he neatly slipped in a Jasraj-style alapana into the piece.

The crowd went into synchronized clapping mode as Mahadevan rendered a Kishore Kumar number at furious speed.  Regrettably, I had to leave at this point.  Note to organizers: Despite this being an Indian music concert, it would actually be nice to start on time, and to not let "short intermissions" stretch to half an hour.

A Teacher's Day Memory

A longtime friend asked me today about the peculiar Inglish usage of the phrase to pass out in the sense of to graduate (rather than the more common Western sense of to become unconscious). Specifically, he asked whether the phrase had been in common use during our student days in India some three decades ago.  The short answer to his question is that it most certainly was in common use. But the query brought back a treasured memory from my undergraduate days that seems particularly appropriate to share on this day that is celebrated as Teacher's Day in India.

Professor T. Ghatak (another Inglish usage, this use of the initial rather than the complete first name) of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur had been our English teacher in our first year (which we had spent mostly reading A Passage to India by E. M. Forster, as I recall).  He was a formal gentleman of the old school: tall, fair, and imposing, yet very approachable.  I had maintained a relationship with him after our formal teacher-student relationship had ended, aided partly by the fact that his son Subhendu was my classmate.

This particular usage had always bothered me, so one day I finally asked Prof. Ghatak about it.  He told me that he was familiar with it only in the sense of 'to graduate'.  I was a little surprised but let it go.

A few days later, I received a handwritten letter from him (an inland letter card, more expensive than a postcard but also more private: I did say he was a formal gentleman), in which he said that he had followed up on my question and had verified the other usage that I had talked about.  He went on to thank me for teaching him something about the English language.

This being well before the time of cellphone cameras and scanners, I unfortunately do not have a copy of this letter.  I wish that I had been more diligent in preserving this testament to Prof. Ghatak's openmindedness and humility, which to me is on par with Buonarroti's immortal utterance "Ancora imparo".

A linguistic side note

The verb graduate comes from the Latin gradus ('degree, step').  The related verb matriculate ('be enrolled at a college or university') comes from the Latin matricula, a diminutive of matrix.