The musical evening organized by Sangeet Ashram was a perfect blend of excellence and tradition. The senior artist, Amiya Ranjan Banerjee (picture), a master of the Bishnupur gharana, surprised the audience with his musical prowess and creativity, which have stayed undiminished even at 89. He commenced his performance with a beautiful early evening raga, Multani. In his vilambit kheyal, he brought out the inherent charm of the raga and created an ambience of melody. Although his voice has suffered a bit due to age, he was quite able to spread his improvisations in three octaves. He presented the taans with spontaneous expertise, as always. He retained the charm in the drut kheyal as well.
The artist's next presentation was in Raga Jogkauns. In both the vilambit and drut kheyals, he presented a variety of vistaars as well as complicated and forceful taans. His energy in rendering the key notes expressing the different aspects of the ragas enthralled the audience. He was accompanied by Samar Saha on tabla and Shubhrakanti Chatterjee on harmonium.
The vocal recital was followed by the sitar presentation by Sugato Nag. He sincerely played alaap, jor and jhala in Abhogi. His alaap reminded listeners of the gayaki ang style in sitar. He continued the enchanting mood with the gats. He concluded with the rendition of a Tagore song, " Sedin dujone", with improvisations on Raga Pilu. The artist was accompanied by Ujjwal Bharati on tabla.
T agore in Sufiana was a unique concept which tried to trace the philosophical similarity between the existentialism in Gitanjali and the famous regional cult, Sufism. The theme of this fusion-based programme organized by Shrutibritto in the ICCR was the essence of ultimate and unconditional surrender of the human soul. Here Tagore, Amir Khusro and Bulleh Shah converged into a single point. Shubhadeep Chakraborty picked up some poems from Gitanjali and his presentation was attractive. Sambudhha Chatterjee enchanted the audience by performing some authentic Sufi songs, especially the Miyan ki Todi bandish, " Aba mori naiyaan", in his clear and well-trained voice. The voice support by Binamra Patra and Aniruddha Nath were mentionable. Allah Rakha Kalawant was praiseworthy on sarengi. Nabarun Dutta on tabla and Soumyajyoti Ghosh in flute were perfect.
The narration by Pankaj Saha and Alokananda Roy added a new dimension to the whole performance. The explanation of the postures of Sufi dance as well as some special incidents from Tagore's life caught the attention. Although the dance performers, Diptangshu Pal, Samrat Banerjee, Devlina Kumar and Gargi Niyogi gave their best, the presentation could have been more interesting.
