KOCHI: It is a festival of a different kind. The music festival going on at Poornathrayee Navaratri Mandapam in Tripunithura (Rugmini Ramakrishna Kalyana Mandapam) has been a rare experience for music lovers in and around the city.
The concerts for this festival are designed in a different style and a veena recital marks the beginning of the day’s programmes. For each day, the concept of Goddess Durga is entirely different in the compositions penned by Poornathrayee Jayaprakash in conventional ragas.
On the first day the concept was that of shailaputhri and the bhavam was kumari. The concert began with a veena recital by Kamakshi which was followed by a soul-stirring vocal performance by Bangalore M S Sheela.
The raga of the day was sankarabharanam.
Sheela rendered the niraval and the alaap in a striking manner with the accompaniment of T Sampath on violin and R Vaidhyanathan on mrudangam.
The second day’s veena recital was by Rajalakshmi and B Arundhathi presented the beautiful rendition of the rag saveri and the concept of Durga on this day was brahmacharini.
V Sindhu accompanied her on violin, Sushil Kumar on mrudangam and T K Parameswaran on ghatam.
Goddess Durga’s unique concept, chandrakhanda, was presented by Preethi Satheesh in the rag kalyani on third day and was accompanied by Edappally Jayakumar on violin, Krishnakumar on mrudangam and Y N Santharam on khanjira.
On fourth day a soulful rendition of the rag Thodi was presented by Mathangi Satyamoorthy. On this particular day the concept of goddess was kushmanda. An elaborate alaap doubled the beauty of the rag and was well supported by M N Moorthy on violin, Parassala Ravi on mrudangam and Alleppey Gopinath on ghatam.
Malini Hariharan presented rag bhairavi on the fifth day and it was rag panthuvaralli by Girija Varma on sixth day. On the day of Durgashtami, a unique composition in the rag nattakurinji was presented by N J Nandini and the concept of Durga on this day was mahagauri.
Thirunelloor Ajith accompanied the singer on violin, Kangazha Vasudevan on mrudangam and Eroor Ayyappan on mukharshankh.
On Mahanavami, Ambalapuzha Thulasi presented rag arabhi and the composition described goddess Durga as siddhidhathri. Viju S Anand accompanied her on violin, Kottayam Manojkumar on mrudangam and N Gopalakrishnan on ghatam.
By worshipping Goddess Saraswathi, the Vijayadashami day had the vocal concert by Baby Sreeraman and the rag of the day was poorvikalyani.
V V Suresh accompanied on violin, K Parameswaran on mrudangam and Vaikom Gopalakrishnan on ghatam.
The music festival will conclude on Tuesday with a hindustani concert by Reshma R Bhatt with the accompaniments of harmonium by Uduppi Shankar Shenoy and tabla by Bangalore Udayraj Kapoor.
Noted journalist Leela Menon will inaugurate the concluding session of the ten-day music festival and Prabhakaran Pazhassi, secretary, Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi, will preside over the function.
