blog

Concert at B Flat Dec 24 2011

Wed, 16 May 2012 04:51:59 +0100

It was nice to end 2011 with a very intimate concert at BFlat, a great live gig place in Indiranagar and to begin 2012 with a energetic set at the Bengaluru Habba Jazz festival at UB City amphitheatre.

Jagriti Festival of Music and Dance

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:14:46 +0100

This is a special concert for us. The acoustics of Jagriti were excellent and the ambience intimate. MoonArra collaborated with Joffy on Djembe, Archana on VO, dance movements by Vallari Shah (who also curated the festival) and Arya Vasudevan. Musically It was a pleasure to play around with a lot of dynamics. Check out the video above shot by our friend Cassius Fernandez.

A great beginning to 2011

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 12:46:08 +0100

Angsana Oasis Spa & Resorts 10th Anniversary event Apr 3rd 2011:

It was quite a magical ambience we performed in on April 3rd at a beautiful resort on the outskirts of Bangalore. MoonArra was specially chosen because of its eclectic fusion of International with an Indian 'flavour' . Our 90min performance of fusion and jazz was well received. This was a day after the thrilling final when India became world champions.

Idea Champions Meet to keep Cricket Clean Mar 11: It was quite an honour to perform for the Idea Cellular event who had invited legendary World Cup winning captains like Kapil Dev, Alan Border, Clive Lloyd and Arjuna Ranatunga for its Keep Cricket Clean campaign

Fireflies Festival Feb 19th :

The annual dusk to dawn festival on the outskirts, with the stage set under a beautiful pipal tree. Our performance was exactly at 12 midnight with a full moon, ambient lighting as we did a special set with movement specialists - Odissi dancer Vandana Supriya and Bharatanatyam dancer Arya Vasudevan who interpreted our songs and a special peace poem written by Madhuri before a 5000 plus cheering, hooting,whistling and extremely well behaved audience.

Little India Festival, KL, Malaysia Oct 27 : It was a rare honour to be the only band from India to be invited by internationally renowned drummer Lewis Pragasam to perform at the inaugural of Little India by our PM Manmohan Singh and in front of an audience of over 20000 people. The experience was amazing!

"Indian Accent" album launched:

MoonArra has just released its album on Rock and Raaga label titled "Indian Accent" containing 10 original compositions and is available at select stores all over India- Landmark chain of stores and Rhythm House Mumbai.

PRESS REVIEWS APPEARED IN THE TIMES OF INDIA AND THE HINDU, BAN,CHE, COIM, HYD AND MANGALORE:

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/article1082101.ece

OnStage@Natya

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:41:06 +0100

On July 18, in between gigs with the Karthik Mani Group at Chennai, Goa and Bangalore for a corporate company, we did an interesting gig on the terrace of a house at Laughing waters in Whitefield. Run by Vallari and Rajesh, Natya provides a intimate ambience with a small audience of 50 turning up for dance and music events. With thunder clouds and rain threatening or shall I say blessing the event, we opened with McCrimmon, Gajananam and went on to perform our album songs like Blue Fuse, Rain (a first) apt for the evening and of course Melody Man, Dance of Kalyani. Vallari and Rajesh opened up the bar after the concert and it was refreshing to mingle with the guests and unwind.

Fete De La Musique - 3 city tour in June 2010

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:52:33 +0100

I must commend and appreciate the efforts of the Director of Alliance Franciase, Bangalore, Nino Ciccarone and his team in the manner in which they put together this year's Fete De La Musique, ensuring that we performed in two cities outside Bangalore as well. The Chennai concert was planned admirably and executed with great professionalism by the Afb Chennai team, consisting mainly of Tara Rhine and Geetha who ensured a significant turnout at the Le Meridien, despite it being situated a little away from the city's centre. The publicity this concert generated in the Chennai press amazed us. The Hindu carried a large article; the Times carried a photograph and a nice write up; the Indian Express had a half page write up of us plus a photograph. To top it all, NDTV-Hindu did a capsule on Moonarra with the show host Nirupama evincing keen interest in Prakash's slide guitar and the Oud our, origins and songs and also capturing a few live snippets of our show that evening. The sound was excellent and it was a pleasure to perform our songs before a discerning audience or as Prakash later remarked - in the hub of culture and fusion in South India. Kenny wasn't in the best of form though - suffering a severe tummy upset and fever, he left the stage hurriedly in our last song Charukesh and collapsed in his room. Lucklily his friend Vivek and his mom managed to revive him. Perhaps the article that summed up our performance was a lucid and lovely review by Deepa Alexander in The Hindu (read our Press section).

We had many apprehensions as we flew into Ahmedabad on June 18th. But we were pleasantly surprised to walk into a Press Conference organized by Afb Ahmedabad's highly efficient and resourceful team. Both the English press and the Gujarathi press were very well represented and also TV9 Ahmedabad. Prakash's knowledge of Hindi helped as he was able to answer fluently the curious queries posed to us by Gujarat Samachar, Divya Bhaskar and Sandesh - three of the most leading newspapers of Gujarat! The Times and DNA carried very flattering stories on us and the articles and reviews of our concert continued days later in the Times after our concert. RedFm interviewed us the next day and we performed some acoustic versions of our songs right at the breakfast table! The concert was at the Sheth Mangaldas Town Hall, close to the Alliance Francaise and it was surprising to see a large youth audience turning up to watch our concert. The audience clearly loved our songs and there was loud appalause when Madhuri began her invocation and sang Melody Man , which is getting to be popular in our concerts. The finale of Prakash and Karthik's energetic and entertaining solos had the audience on their feet. We were really touched by the response to our brand of fusion music in this city and the wonderful hospitality - we thank the Director for extending herself by taking us out for authentic Gujarathi dinner at - Agashayee, a popular heritage restaurant. Aapnu Amdavadis - we would love to play again in Ahmedabad some day!

Our last concert for the Fete De la Musique on June 21 in Bangalore - it had been a while since we had performed here and we were really looking forward to this one. This time, on Prakash's suggestion, we invited young tabla player Adarsh to perform with us. This concert was going to be very important as we would be making an announcement of our forthcoming album "Indian Accent". After the invocation, we moved into a high energy set with Melody man, Blue Fuse, HeartSky, Eastern Sun, Dance of Kalyani - with Adarsh and Karthink engaging in fast paced 'thanis' we ended with Fields of Gold for the encore. It was nice to see a full turnout and lots of new faces in the audience. As Kenny smsd me later "where did all that energy come from? I replied cheesily with "from somewhere over the rainbow"!

Bangkok jazz festival - March 11, 2010

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:53:47 +0100

When the invite came in early Jan to perform at the Bangkok Jazz festival, I couldn't believe my ears! This was simply out of the blue - the organisers liked our sound and our profile, would we be free to perform at the fest? I hit the send button after typing a hurried 'yes, we would love to...". After that it seemed like a roller coaster as we scrambled to get the contracts done, the ticketing, visa process details. We couldn't wait to watch and perhaps meet names like Steve Lukather of Toto, Lewis Prakasam, Bob James, Randy Brecker, Robbenford, Rodney Holmes. And then just a couple of days before the scheduled date for our flight came the news that the fest might be called off as there was local civil unrest which was simmering for some time now. After surviving some anxious moments and with the help of Madhuri's uncle's friends Sudhakar and Hari in Thailand, we managed to obtain a cell number of the Director and were reassured that everything would be fine and we would be travelling! You bet we were! The Bangkok Jazz fest was being organised in a square at one of Asia's second largest shopping mall, the Central World Plaza on two stages. Our performance on the open stage was outdoors and was an intense performance. We had to once again turn down requests for our album saying it would be ready only by July. We went across to watch the other international star performers -Randy Brecker's Soulbop with Lukather, Robbenford, Daryl Jones, Rodney Holmes, Gil Evans set the tented venue on fire with their brand of jazz! It was another to go backstage and exchange notes - Karthik demonstrated a small Konnakol for Rodney Holmes while Steve Lukather came over and asked us " How did it sound? " On the last day, we watched the Asian Fourplay with Bob james, Jack Lee, Nathan east and Lewis Prakasam doing an all familiar Fourplay sound and some of Jack Lee's beautiful compositions.
Post our performance, we had time to sample Bangkok's amazing street food, a visit to the Gem museum in tuk-tuk and Kenny and I the famed night life...you better ask Kenny for the details! Thai hospitality, Thai food - it's been a heady and unforgettable week, Kapunka!

Goa - Early 2010

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 04:12:10 +0100

We started early this year, 2nd and 3rd Jan for a back-to-back concert in Goa. At Victor Hugo's Goa Chitra Museum on the 2nd and Armando's Jazz Heritage on the 3rd. Till we flew in to Goa, we had no clue of the first concert, originally supposed to be in a lounge close to Vasco and then suspense. But Jaydev, the organiser had his reasons and pulled off a last minute show at Victor Hugo's with help from Skitter and her team. We landed at the venue at 7p.m as the taxi driver couldn't find the venue. Finally when we reached, it was an eye opener to see a charming heritage of old Goa resurrected and preserved by its curator Victor Hugo with a compact amphi theatre tucked in - by this time Kenny was proving himself to be our in-house audio expert in getting the eq right on the modest sound that was available. An extremely humid night in a pastoral setting - all of us including Karthik had to battle dozens of tiny curious winged visitors in between solos - german trumpeteer Mathias who was accompanying us pulled out his trumpet just as we landed in Goa, at the airport standing next to a billboard which had the picture of a trumpet player - amusing onlookers at the airport! Mathias played some great solos on our tracks especially Caravan and Madhuri's fine rendition of My Funny Valentine even if he was distracted by some romantic notions. Prakash's slide guitar technique of seamlessly switching from a nashvilleesque sound to a complete Hindustani tone is really wonderful! It was great to perform our special brand of fusion in Goa, traditionally thought to be a bastion only for jazz and other forms of western music - a myth which I think is disintegrating as newer and more experimental forms of music such as ours is gaining acceptance. We signed off our two day tour of Goa at Armando's Jazz heritage in Campal, Panjim. Perhaps the highlight of our 2 hour set was a feedback from a member of the audience - "what you guys played was fusion, not jugalbandi like all the 'others'! Heightened by the performance and the ever-friendly Goan spirit and a friendlier media, we were in a delirious state till early morning at Miramar beach. Jaydev and Skitter and the rest of the team deserve a big round of applause for putting together a very challenging 2 day tour. We'd love to perform in Goa again - who doesn't?

Fete de La Musique, Kyra and Bengaluru Habba '09

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:13:57 +0100

Post Java Jazz, MoonArra's next few important gigs were at the Fete De La Musique at Alliance Francaise on world music day June 21, Kyra the next day and Bengaluru Habba in december. Fete de La Musique is really important to us as Alliance Francaise is one of the few organisations which promote world music with a religious fervour and zeal. I also got a chance to test out my 'Oud' which I'd picked up in Egypt. Our set is becoming better as we play more gigs and as Prakash keeps remarking that we must play the same set over and over again for songs to get registered and for us to become fluent. I couldn't agree with him more. At Kyra the next day we were amazed to see a near full house and it was a Monday. Earlier on during the day, I got a call from Chris Avinash asking if I would like to call off the concert as there were only a couple of bookings. I replied that we would play with or without an audience. This was a truly an amazing show as we had plenty of time for our sound check and were relaxed when it was show time. A lot of our friends and relatives along with their families showed up and it was quite heartening to see that they enjoyed our performance.

I love December and that 'biting chill' which Bengaluru is all famous for. The Bengaluru Habba jazz segment was being organised in an open air amphi theatre at the UB City and 11 bands performed over 3 days before a capacity audience turnout. I had to juggle between organizing this fest and performing with MoonArra! Our performance before a home crowd had them literally on their feet - didn't know our songs could get them to do this! This was Madhuri's rendition of Susheela Raman's Love Trap and Leela. Karthik played on his Cajun (Pro: kahoon). We ended up doing three encores! Kenny put up his 'metal' fingers at the end and Prakash smiled and I knew that this was another performance to remember! Notwithstanding this one fan who couldn't control himself when Prakash soloed!

First stop - Java Jazz

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:21:45 +0100

This is early July and with the impending monsoon about to sweep across India, I'll pause a moment to reflect at this point in time - our long pending debut album "Indian Accent" will hit stores in about 3 weeks from now. 2009 is really the significant peg in our journeys, when we were invited to perform at the Java Jazz festival in Jakarta. The sponsors rug under our rhythmic feet miraculously stayed on, ensuring that we reached our first oversea gig and Kenny's (wilson Kenneth) first ever gig with MoonArra. I often tease him saying that he just got on to the bus and landed right on stage with us. The atmosphere was electric at the Sultan Jakarta which was connected by an underground conduit to the gigantic venue. We would have breakfast every morning and watch Harvey Mason, Kirk Whalum or Dave Weckl or Simon Philips and a host of jazz greats dig into theirs. Our performance on stage was like a dream -15mins for sound check and then onto a set of 45mins and the Cendrawasih 3 Hall was full! The collaboration with Gilang Ramadhan, Indonesia's top drummer was like a torrential downpour on stage with Kartik and him exchanging solos on Konnakol, Khanjira and drums. It was true energy and emotion! I'd just had time to buy a new guitar in one of the shops - a Line 6 variax 300 nylon acoustic and Kenny his GB&A bass which he took half a day to choose. The line 6 was one of the best decisions I made, as 20 gigs later, I'm still amazed by the sound. The Indonesian people are full of smiles and happy to help whereever - my Ovation needed adjusting and Rudy, an Indonesian corrected it and wouldn't accept payment for it. I gave him my red 'merc' cap after noticing the many mercs parked in his garage! The other highlights were being invited to party on Peter Gontha's beach house and Kenny injuring his knee after running up the escalator and filming his own knee being stitched up by the hotel doctors while we fumed! The Java Jazz team must be commended for the wonderful hospitality, the detailed and efficient tour schedule, the precision and the professionalism in organising and event of such scale and proportion.