HYDERABAD: Ringing in the monsoons with a musical celebration, Banyan Tree’s annual thematic festival, Barkha Ritu had quite a turnout at Ravindra Bharathi recently. A full house before the show even started, the auditorium still had people shuffling for seats as flautists S. Shashank and Rakesh Chaurasia sound checked their mics. Barkha Ritu’s Hyderabad edition of their annual eight-city tour kicked off with the seasoned music by two stalwarts.
The show opened to the duo’s jugalbandi of Carnatic flute renditions by Shashank against Rakesh’s Hindustani tunes. Each of them backed by percussions: mridangam for the Carnatic and tabla for Hindustani. Shashank and Rakesh took turns to present their expertise on the wind instrument.
They started slow with mellow tunes and progressed to faster more complicated musical patterns. Rhythm sections joined in eventually sometimes backing up the flautists and sometimes wowing the audience with their speed and grip on taal. You would also notice the feet of all four artists tapping at the same pace although they were playing in their time. Their act ended with a fast-paced jugalbandi between both the flutes, the mridangam and the tabla.
What followed was another seasoned singer, Kaushiki Chakraborthy taking the stage solemnly and engaging the audience in casual banter. “I am a much smaller artist to be performing after Chaurasia ji and Shashank ji, but if this is how it is then so be it.” She took off her first note in raag megh, it boomed across the auditorium powerfully. As she sang to an awe-struck crowd, a tabla, harmonium and a sitar backed her up beautifully accentuating her voice.