THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: While team Ensemble 7 rocked the stage with their maiden performance, the rhythm of friendship accentuated louder than the music they sung. The band, based in the city, has professional and amateur singers alike who have met on the lanes of music and developed a strong bond of friendship that made them unite at a musical juncture.
Vocalist Jims George met Vineet G P, who directs the band, through a common friend. Charu Hariharan, the percussionist, and Vineet were college mates while Vineet and vocalist Anish G P are brothers and it goes on in this way.
“But how did we get to form the band?”, Charu wondered aloud and her band mates were soon brooding over the past. She herself came up with the answer. “We united just for the cause of music,” she smiles.
The team plays world music, under which they say any musical genre in the world can appear. “Our focus is on introducing novelty in music. That is how we decided to try ‘A Cappella’, the Italian style giving prominence to vocal with light instrumentation. Though we are not trained in it, we are just giving it a try,” says Vineet the chief lyricist-cum-composer, who directed the main performance.
One full length song in ‘A Cappella’ and a few other songs, where ‘A Cappella’ made a light presence, were presented by the team. Vineet played stage piano and Charu was on Cajon, a percussion instrument of African origin. All five songs - each of a maximum length of five minutes - were composed by Vineet who also wrote a good chunk of the lyrics. The numbers that peppered the evening included a Latin-Sanskrit chanting and a lullaby having only one word ‘rareeraaro’.
Says Vineet, “all members in the team belong to our friends circle. Ours is a network of around 20 friends. Of them, nine have joined this time.” The team, therefore, does not have a particular set of performers. Giving equal opportunity to every member is a philosophy that lies at the core of our team. There are full-time musicians, students, businessmen and other employees in the team.
The team - Vineet, Anish, Jijo John, Jims George, Anoop Mohandas, Muthu Krishnan M, Jayachandran V K, Charu and Latha Krishna - went on stage for their first performance at ‘The Cantata Festival’ at Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan on Friday.
So, how did the number seven got appended to the name?, we ask. To which Jayachandran replies, “it was just for the sound of the combination of ensemble and seven, But then, we were also inspired by the concept of the saptha swarangal or the seven wonders of the world.”