Final Concert

The final concert was about 3 hours long. In typical SVYM fashion, there was tea and snacks 30 minutes before the event started. The vocalists, having learned they were going first, ended up waiting in the room after a few minutes of nervous mingling, followed shortly by everyone else in our group gathing there, chatting and giggling.

The students from Cornell and Iowa University joined us for the whole event, so the relatively tiny classroom was packed. Everyone waited patiently for the gurus to roll in, and the SVYM greetings and welcoming began the event.

Everyone had about 15 minutes to perform, save Anu's dance piece at the end. It was incredible to see the work that everyone had put in over the 4 weeks. It had the energy of a beginner's piano recital, but the kind where everyone is an adult and this is like their second or third instrument so they're nervous but also do a great job.

The show started with the vocalists, and we sang in unison all but one song we learned over our time here. It was so lovely having our guru, Raja Lakshmi, in the crowd during the performance, and felt like a very organic culmination of the work we'd been putting in together.

Next up were the mridangam players, and together they performed rhythm exercises they learned - both on the instrument, and vocally. For the vocal exercises, each hit corresponds to a different word, which yielded a rather hypnotic chant.

After that was the veena players, who strutted their stuff separately. They each played two songs, one of which was the same and quite fast! I was really impressed by how far they had gotten during their time here, especially so after I tried my hand at playing the veena one day and realized how different the body, spacing and fingering is to any other string instrument I've played.

Then Allie shared what she'd been working on with her guru, as he sat up front to support her. She played a few pieces with drone and electric mridangam, and dazzled the audience with her newly learned Carnatic improvisation. Her guru dazzled the audience with his ever present, proud grin during her performance.

Professor Rush shared the vocal pieces he'd been working on with Raja Lakshmi, which were devotional pieces that sounded very soothing. After just scratching the surface of this type of vocal technique, I was inspired by how far Steve had come in his studies. He performed one song in Kannada, and there were some voices in the crowd singing along.

Finally Anu hit us with her Bharatanatyam dance performance, which was nearly 30 minutes long and consisted of 2 different pieces. She was all dressed up and had her posse of musicians to accompany here, one of which was her dance teacher singing and playing the cymbals. Even though she had learned the last part of the dance just the day before, she performed with grace and everyone - especially the two little girls in the crowd - was enthralled.

At the end, after farewells from Dr. Reika, one of the other SVYM affiliated musicians - the one who conducted the South Indian Classical Music lecture - jumped up from his seat to make and impromptu speech. He congratulated us on all of our hard work, saying that the performance was "nothing short of an miracle," going on to say that most students take years to cover the material we got in four weeks, and many quit before then. He gave much gratitude to Steve for pushing to organizing the successful program, and eagerly thanked all of the performers.

It was an incredibly beautiful and rewarding ending to the evening, and the trip for some; immediately after dinner we said goodbye to Sophia as she was off to a percussion camp on the east coast of the U.S. The next day was filled with shopping, relaxation, a movie viewing and many emotional farewells. It was hard to feel the impending separation while we were are still engaged in the same routines together, which I think was a fitting ending to the trip - level headed and loving.

Shot from the Green Hotel... I am going to miss Anu's photography

Now I'm just looking forward to the journey ahead for inertia, looking back on the lessons learned for stability, and trying to stay present....