Fete De La Musique - 3 city tour in June 2010
Posted by Jagadeesh on Wednesday, July 7, 2010
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"!
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"!