The 22nd edition of Rajalakshmi Fine Arts’ September Season festival featured eminent musicians

Coimbatore does not have an age-old connection with Carnatic music. Yet today, the annual September Season festival, organised by Rajalakshmi Fine Arts, attracts rasikas from all over South India. There was even a rasika, who had come from the U.S. to attend the 11-day festival, which is in its 22nd year.

“This annual festival has been bringing together the best of musicians, and also providing a platform to youngsters,” said Sathish Kumar, a Dubai-based surgeon and founder of Rajalakshmi Fine Arts. A trained musician, Dr. Sathish felt the need to give back to his home town, and conceived this festival, which is named after his mother.

According to eminent vocalist Bombay Jayashri, the festival has created a special place for itself in Tamil Nadu’s cultural calendar.

The success of the festival is not just in its formidable line up and impeccable arrangements, but also in the care taken to curate the content, with artistes sometimes being given themes, or a list of never-before-presented or commonly rendered compositions.

While the concert is in progress, interesting information about ragas, compositions, and composers are flashed on a screen for the benefit of the audience. Teachers and students of music schools and colleges are invited to attend the festival, which is otherwise a ticketed event.

“This is the only ticketed classical music festival in Coimbatore,” said Dr. Sathish, who felt that art can be respected only if it is not offered for free.

Lasting effect

Bombay Jayashri has been featured at the festival every year since its inception, and was also the first recipient of the festival’s ‘Isai Manimakutam’ award. She was full of admiration for how the audience has been carefully nurtured over the years. Jayashri’s singing at the festival had a meditative quality about it, and her music remained with the listeners long after the concert was over.

Jayashri, who was also the guest of honour at this year’s festival, presented awards to three well-known accompanists — J. Vaidyanthan (mridangam), H.N. Bhaskar (violin) and S. Karthick (ghatam). S. Vijeyajaya, of Rajalakshmi Fine Arts, shared that this was the first time since the inception of the festival that accompanists were honoured.

The chief guest at the festival was the 101-year-old mridangam vidwan T.K. Murthy.

Held after a gap of three years, this edition of September Season featured many other well-known musicians such as Aruna Sairam, Sudha Ragunathan, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Ranjani-Gayatri, Ramana Balachandra (veena), Ramakrishnan Murthy and J.A. Jayanth.

Chandana Bala Kalyan.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

An unusual concert was by the Mumbai-based Carnatic vocalist Chandana Bala Kalyan. Her presentation focused on the works of poets such as Andal, Purandaradasar, Kabir, Meera, Jayadeva, Bulle Shah and Amir Khusrau. Chandana presented these songs in different genres — folk music, ghazal, qawwali, abhang — but the underlying thread remained Carnatic music.

With youngsters and the uninitiated forming a large section of the audience nowadays, the key factor at such festivals is execution.

The Delhi-based critic writes on classical music.