BHUBANESWAR: Hundreds of people in Orissa were left spellbound when they listened to a fusion music concert by artistes from India and Italy over the weekend.
The concert was held at Rabindra Mandap here Saturday evening by Pragati, a Bhubaneswar-based cultural organisation, in collaboration with the Department of Culture, Government of Orissa.
The concert was a confluence of Indian and Western music performed by Vrindavan-based sitar maestro Acharya Trigunateet Jaimini and Italian guitar maestro D. Turi.
They were accompanied on the tabla by Gopal Kaushik.
"It is for the first time that we organised a fusion music concert in Orissa where an Indian and Western musician performed together," secretary of Pragati Sudhansu Marik told IANS.
"There have been many classical music concerts performed by eminent artistes of India but Orissa never hosted any fusion music programme like this previously," he said.
The one-hour programme was divided into four musical movements: Sankha, Chakra, Gada and Padma.
While the first three were distinct and outstanding compositions based on the symbolic implications of Lord Vishnu's paraphernalia, the last was a meditative composition signifying the bliss and harmony associated with Padma or the lotus.
The artistes signed off with their own version of "Vande Mataram" in Raag Desh on the request of the audience who were reluctant to leave their seats even after the end of the programme.
Jaimini is widely acclaimed for his contribution to the field of Indian classical music and fusion music, and extensive research on transcendental and therapeutic music.
At present, he is a professor of music at Mangalayatan University, Aligarh, in Uttar Pradesh.