Usha Padmanabhan - classical and neat presentation

Usha Padmanabhan performed for SAFE on the 9th of December, 2009 at Sastry Hall Mylapore.

Her concert was sedate and sound with no add on frills. A neat presentation, full of raga bhava and complete adherenece to classicism was what she brought to the table.

Kamalamba Samrakshatumam in Anadabhairavi, Varugirano vaarano in Kannada Soundararajam in Brindavana Saranga all fitted into the above genre of singing. One only felt that a little more of joy and enthusiasm could have been shown in Brindavana Saranga and Kannada.

Usha came alive with her Kamboji raga and Sri Raghuvara Aprameya with neraval in the same line followed with swaras; which brought out her imagination, crisp manodharma and classicism to the best.

The concert was concluded with Kandena Kalasinali- Purandara dasa in ragamalika and Entati kuluke , a Javali in Kalyani.

Melakaveri Tyagarajan did his best in supporting her with the violin and Trivandrum Vaidyanathan excelled in pithy, short and yet effective kanakku passages in his mridangam.

A slightly more co-operative voice and a better acoustic system could have uplifted this concert better.

What really is disturbing is the preparations for the next concert - people, artists and others walking up and down, talking , discussing, boxes being opened right in front of the stage, mikes being set etc, thereby making the whole atmosphere noisy and disturbed taking away from the artist on stage.