Music aficionados will get to savour a unique synthesis of India's Carnatic music and Western classical music as an NGO in Chennai launches a project called "Mozart Meets India".
The organisation, Tamil Maiyam, last year coordinated "Thiruvasagam", a project that featured noted music director and composer Ilayaraja working with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. Thiruvasagam was the first production of Maiyam and the brainchild of Jegath Gaspar Raj.
"Thiruvasagam could not serve the purpose of taking Indian music to international audiences as the lyrics were in Tamil," Gaspar Raj told IANS.
The Mozart project will be different. The allusion to Mozart is, however, more symbolic than any real adaptation. The project will begin at a time when the world is celebrating Mozart's 250th birth anniversary.
"Carnatic ragas will be integrated with the discipline of Western harmony," said Gaspar Raj.
Joe Arun, who will be coordinator for the Mozart project, said: "The strength of Carnatic music is its melody and that of Western is its harmony. The result will transcend genre and certainly create world music."
The six ragas that will be taken up for the project are Kapi, Panthuvarali, Sindhubhairavi, Bilahari, Sankarabharanam and Hamsanandi. These ragas were chosen for their compatibility with symphonic music.
"The ragas will maintain their purity and grammar. The Western pieces too will maintain their grammar but it will not be fusion music," Gaspar Raj said.
{{/usCountry}}"The ragas will maintain their purity and grammar. The Western pieces too will maintain their grammar but it will not be fusion music," Gaspar Raj said.
{{/usCountry}}A European string quartet will be roped in for the symphony and over 75 instrumentalists will take part in the project. Heading the team will be 34-year-old Nellai Jesuraj, who will arrange the orchestral score.
The Indians in the team will include Bombay Jayasree, Kadri Gopinath, O.S. Arun, sitar player Kishore Kumar and Embar Kannan. The Western musicians will include guitarist Carlos Santana and Arun Pandian.
The project will cost Rs.2.5 million and the first release, slated for June, will be a live performance, the proceeds of which will go to charity. The organisation hopes to sell as many as two million CDs of the music that is being billed as India's first symphony.
--Indo-Asian News Service
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