Date:03/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/03/stories/2008120359880400.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

It was a night of pure music

Deepika Arwind

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Enthralling: Anoushka Shankar along with Ian Anderson and other members of Jethro Tull performing in Bangalore on Tuesday.

Bangalore: The sitar and the flute had a date on a cold Tuesday night. What transpired was a fiery show with an unusual blend of genres and generations.

Sitar player Anoushka Shankar and British band Jethro Tull came together on stage on Seagram’s 100 Pure Music “A night with the Piper and the Princess,” their third concert in India after having performed in Delhi and Kolkata.

The game plan was clear — the first set had Anoushka play the sitar, the second set saw Jethro Tull engage the audience familiar with their music and the third set brought the band and Anoushka together for a perfectly-rehearsed jam session.

Anoushka along with flautist Ravi Chandra Kullur and tabla player Tanmoy Bose began with r aag jog in Aaditaalam which spun into a lively repartee between the sitar, flute and tabla. Each of the musician’s displayed unmistakable musical genius through the first set, even as Anoushka’s sitar did not seem to take well to Bangalore’s weather, as she mentioned.

Next came a composition in raag panchamsigara played in two guts of six and 16 beats, composed by Anoushka’s father, sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.

Jethro Tull stormed the stage, and easily so. With frontman Ian Anderson’s multi-instrumental dexterity, the band launched straight into Living in the Past and went on to Mercy with a beautiful guitar solo by guitarist Martin Barre.

Their next song went out as a dedication to Rolling Stone member Mick Jagger who turned 65 in July this year. Soon the head-bobbing audience sunk into Anderson’s almost eccentric liveliness and sense of humour as he whipped out his mouth organ and played Heavy Horses, a condensed version of the 1972 album’s title track Thick as a Brick, finally culminating into a grand finale of the set with Aqualung, considered Jethro Tull’s magnum opus.

But the third set was what had the audience most interested. Tea with Anoushka, a piece especially created for the tour began with a slight dip in energy but made up towards the end. Anderson introduced the next song fondly. Celtic Cradle had a lounge-music feel, one of easy listening and gliding through landscape until the guitars came in. Slight anxiety over her sitar’s uneasiness kept Anoushka going through the third set when Jethro Tull played Mother Goose, an acoustic piece into which the sitar blended in seamlessly. Audiences who had come there for Jethro Tull in particular did not leave their seats because they knew the show was not over until the next big Tull song Locomotive Breath was played. And surely enough, a few moments later, the sitar swung into Jethro Tull’s other big hit, winding up the night.