Anupama Bhagwat graced the Arden Gild Hall with an exhilarating performance.  Anupama-ji was true to her Gharana, and did her guru, Pandit Bimalendu Mukherjee proud.  She started the evening with Raga Jhinjhoti, which she developed for ~70 minutes.  She presented her alaap rendition in the typical gayaki style of her Gharana* followed by jod, and jhala, which were intentionally shortened to do justice to an extensive rendition of the gat in vilambit teentaal, followed by drut teentaal.  She played both the melody and rhythm with equal proficiency.  The badhat of the Jhinjhoti raga in vilambit gat was effortless and culminated with an exciting jhala.  After the intermission, she played raga Kedar, (for ~30 minutes) in madhya laya jhaptal.  Here, she played intricate taans and very interesting sawal-jawab with the tabla.  The drut was a wonderful rendition of the paramparik rachana "kanha re nanda nandan" in teentaal; the jhala was a nice display of sitar and tabla interactions.  This was followed by a 20 minute rendition of raga Rageshree, where she played a short alaap, jor and then a gat in drut ektaal.  The romantic pathos was very nicely generated in this raga.  She concluded the performance with a Sindhu Bhairavi dadra; in this piece the laggi in 8 matra keharwa-style was very beautifully played and was very elegantly brought back to dadra to conclude.  She received a well deserved standing ovation at the end of the concert.  She was accompanied very artistically by Nitin Mitta on tabla.  Nitin, a disciple of Pandit Arvind Mulgaonkar from Mumbai, is a young tabla artisan, who has taken on this art form as a profession at an early age.  His accompaniment was very beautifully entwined in the melody and he played his peshkars and tukadas on the vazan of the gat.  His tirakita bol were extremely precise and he showed tremendous skill in the jhala, while maintaining the speeds with one the index finger, and daagga-ghumana at the extremely fast laya. It was a very enjoyable concert for the audience of ~200 from both Sangeet and Arden Gild associations.  Links of the artist's bio-sketches and websites are listed in the artist section of this website.

*The sitar playing in the Imdadkhani Gharana (school of music) has close resemblance to vocal music, and more so with the Kirana Gharana of vocalists. In this style, the sitar is played with a strong attempt to keep the notes "continuous" like voice, even though it is a discontinuous (plucking) instrument. To achieve this, artists use BANDH (closed) ZAVARI (bridge), which maintains the sound for a longer time after each plucking (similar to the sound generated by keeping the piano pedal pressed for a longer time). This allows artists to produce "meend", glissando through 4 to 5 notes in sequence in one pluck of string. Every time the next upper note is played, it is initially just softly touched to return to the lower note, prolonging the playing time of the upper note at each touch, and finally playing it completely. That is how the vistaar (expansion) of the raag is done from the lowermost note to the uppermost note. The taans are also like the taans of vocalists (harkat, gamak, gitkidi etc.), and artists often choose drut (fast) compositions which match vocal compositions.