TM Krishna is singing in Rickmansworth on March 28 (www.avarthanas.org)

Aruna Sairam is singing at Southbank centre on 3rd April

Shashank / Ganesh Kumaresh violin concert at southbank centre on 4th April

Sanjay Subrahmaniam is singing on May 19th at Bhavan (vanifinearts.net)

If anyone knows of any other concerts coming up please reply as I find it quite hard to find out about them.

Also, the last few concerts that I have been to have been a little disappointing – very little classical music and too many Tamil thukkadas.

I try to go to Chennai every two years in December but it’s getting rather frustrating to see virtually no other concerts in between.

Speaking to some friends/cousins in US, Canada and Australia this doesn’t seem to be the case there.

No it’s not the case in the places you’ve mentioned, and I am dying of jealousy!

I can tell you more when we meet if you like or I can clog your mailbox. Whichever you prefer. The musician is Indian and blind; his wife is of Russian Jewish descent and they have been married over 25 years. Diversity becomes them, doesn’t it?

And at this stage, we need friends who can introduce us to PR people and to possible donors etc. I am making pitches to some £££££ people and some of them we meet this weekend over tea and cakes. I have a lot of corp venturing experience but not-for-profit is a different ballgame altogether.

See you in a few days.
Ok, let’s talk when we meet though I don’t mind the clogged inbox…! Yes, diversity does become them!

Interesting timing (for me to have read this post).

One because Neha assures me that on the Dec 7th concert, we have seats near you

Yes. You can’t escape me . But at that concert I think they will speak in English. Otherwise we have Neha and R to translate!

Secondly because I am the trustee of a not-for-profit foundation in early stages of development which aims at creating communal harmony through the arts and culture. In discussions with one of the founders this week, I mentioned how un-diverse some of the ‘networks’ I went to, as part of my work, were. She said that Hindustani music and classical dance communities were very diverse. They (her husband, the multi instrument playing musician and she, Indian classical dancer and vocalist) always communicate in English with their audiences in the Middle East, South Africa, Europe and of course the UK. I will mention this post to her as diversity in many forms is core to our aims and work. In brief, I empathise fully with your experience (As a side note: we are looking for friends and patrons at the moment, and I am happy to talk more about it if you would like to be involved, thanks).

How interesting. Do mail me more details…Would love to be involved, though am too broke to be a patron! I have to say though, that some Hindustani musicians can also be pretty “un-diverse” in they way they sometimes dismiss Carnatic music…with a foot in both worlds now, am beginning to see the problems with attitudes in both!

PS: How hard is it to print and photocopy handouts? May be charge a couple quid for it? They do that at the Opera, don’t they?

To be fair, at the bigger concerts they do have flyers, but it isn’t consistent. Usually these don’t convey much information, they’re mostly ads for the concerts. The London scene isn’t as lively as in the US at the moment, but I think this is at least partly, the fault of the audience.

I think the carnatic music scene has gone downhill a bit now in London – we know some artistes, through having hosted them here on their tours, and they mentioned that there are fewer tours in the UK, which seems to prefer “light music” – interestingly, Europe seems to be gaining popularity. I have cousins in London, who’ve lived there all their lives and they tell me the same thing – they used to host artistes regularly, but now it has been a while since anyone came to London.

As for letting non-niche audiences know about concerts – not sure what the orgs in UK do, but here, most do the best they can. Most are non-profits, operating on fairly tight budgets – an ad large enough to be seen by the general public, in a popular newspaper (as an example – we tried this for one dance performance where we needed the attendance to raise money) costs a lot. The one thing we always do is to look up any indic organization in the city we’re in, and see if they have a web page – most do – and then look for events sponsored by that org. Many of the larger US cities also have desi-centric forums (similar to Sulekha), and notices of concerts are posted there. Notices are also posted in the temple(s) and sent out as part of the temple newsletter. One of our local universities has a school of music, where Indian music is a subject – we send out flyers of concerts to that school.
Recently, we’ve seen that kutcheribuzz.com promote concerts around the world.

I think the UK also suffers from the phenomenon of Indian artistes thinking all of the UK is one city, so a concert is Manchester is the same as a London concert!

M

Glad that I’m not the only one feeling this way and that I’m not imagining it.There was one year when we had a run of good concerts, Hindustani and Carnatic, and then they dried up.