Lighting up the stage
The warm glow from thousands of flickering candles illuminates the stage where a piano sits in the middle. The setting prompts some of the audience members to fish out their mobile cameras and capture some images of the stage, as well as of themselves—after all, who can resist good lighting? There is a hush in the air as Joshua Peter, the pianist, comes up on stage and takes his place. In a few seconds, the Shri Ram Centre for the Performing Arts in Delhi is filled with the lilting music of the popular song Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles.
The occasion is Candlelight Concerts—a live, music experience set in an intimate setting amidst the glow of candles. The tribute to The Beatles is just one of the many shows which are part of their roster. “This experience stands out by breaking away from the traditional concert format, making it more accessible and engaging for audiences who might not have considered attending before,” says Deepa Bajaj, Country Manager, India, Live Your City. Some of the other musical experiences they organise include, A Tribute to Frank Sinatra, From Mozart to Chopin and Queen vs Abba, among others.
Peter skillfully plays the tunes on the piano, without revealing which song he’s playing next, prompting the listeners to guess quietly in their minds before revealing which song it is once he has finished playing it. One can almost imagine the artiste’s sense of joy. “This was probably the most relaxed I have ever been on stage,” he laughs, adding that unlike other stages where he’s often caught up in the usual concerns of ‘how does he look, how does he move, or even how the audience is reacting’, the technicalities, the candlelight setting created an almost dream-like calm.
“The gentle, warm light seemed to lift the weight of perfectionism off my shoulders, helping me to focus fully on the music and the joy it brings me,” he says. With photography only allowed during the last song, the added non-distraction of no phones has the audience fully absorbed into the music.
The set is a wonderful mix of Beatles classics, both familiar and maybe a few which were not so familiar to the people. In between, Peter keeps up a light banter with the audience, sprinkling it with trivia about the songs. Before playing the melancholy acoustic guitar ballad Yesterday, he tells the audience that it is one of the most covered pop songs in the world with more than 3,000 versions! “It is also one of the few pop songs which has a lot of classical elements infused in it,” he mentions.
As Peter continues to perform, he also nudges the audience to sing a little louder. “I teach at a school. If I play and nobody sings, I feel I’m not a good teacher,” he says with a laugh.
As the concert nears the end, an audience member shouts out a request for Peter to play Hey Jude. “I will only play it on the condition that I will stop playing the moment you stop singing,” he says. It is all the encouragement the audience needs, and the auditorium is filled with their voices, lustily singing the familiar strains of the song. Later, Peter says that the real high point of the concert was the encore. “When the audience joined in, singing those iconic lines, the whole place felt like one big choir. It was this incredible moment of connection and energy, like my own “Jacob Collier moment,” and it’s hard to put that into words,” he says.