S2 EP4 | Ganesh & Kumaresh
55m
Recorded at Darbar Festival 2009, on 4th April, at the Purcell Room at London's Southbank Centre.
Musicians:
- Ganesh & Kumaresh Rajagopalan (violin)
- Patri Satish Kumar (mridangam)
- RN Prakash (ghatam)
Raag Abheri
In a captivating and soulful duet, the violin brothers perform Abheri with profound deftness and powerful camaraderie. Their alapana is grounded, building an electric tanam with stunning percussive innovations on the violin. The pallavi is detailed with improvisations revealing diverse dimensions of Abheri. The sawal-jawab towards the end followed by a percussion interplay between Patri Satish Kumar and RN Prakash is a blockbuster.
Ganesh & Kumaresh Rajagopalan are regarded as the best violinists of their generation. They learned from their father who worked as an insurance broker for a living and played music for passion. Before Kumaresh, the younger of the two even turned 10, they had performed more than 100 concerts already and received acclaim as child prodigies. Growing up in northern India has also made them open-minded as musicians and have shaped their repertoires. Ganesh and Kumaresh are hailed by Carnatic legends such as MS Gopalakrishnan as the leading violinists of their generation, but they have also ruled the fusion music territory for years now, working successfully with jazz and electronic musicians.
Patri Satish Kumar (mridangam) is one of the most acclaimed percussionists with a spectacular performing career. He was initiated into music by his mother, Padmavathy, who is a violinist herself. Satish has also studied Mridangam under gurus such as Sree Ramachandramurthy and Vankayala Narasimhan and has been conferred an honorary doctorate by the University of California, Berkeley in 2018.
RN Prakash is one of the leading Carnatic percussionists in Europe. He was born and trained in India in Carnatic music after which, during his 30’s, he had permanently shifted to the UK. Apart from being a busy concert artist, RN Prakash holds a prime position as a faculty at the London School of Carnatic Music.