Every country, and sometimes every region of a country, has its own style of music. Thus, the exposure to such a varied genre of music during her Masters and Post Masters Fellowship studies at Berklee College of Music, led Apoorva Krishna’s fascination to concept of chords and the realm of harmonies in Western music to grow. Though her basic interest is Indian classical music, this exposure to world music genres led her to want to create fusions of Indian classical and contemporary Western music. Apoorva is already an accomplished violinist belonging to the Lalgudi school. Her recent composition Merging Parallels has been garnering international attention. Several eminent artists like John McLaughlin, Aruna Sairam, Bombay Jayashri and Ranjani-Gayatri, Abhishek Raghuram, her gurus Anuradha Sridhar, Srimathi Brahmanandam, among others have expressed their appreciation with encouraging words. Says John McLaughlin, “I've been involved with musicians from India and Indian music for the greater part of my life and one of the fascinating aspects I have experienced is the attempt to integrate harmony into the Indian traditions and now we have this young generation of the 21st century and they are studying Western music -- in particular, harmony and this music video from Apoorva and Varijashree is amazing on how they are integrating harmony into the melody, with the sophisticated rhythms of India and it's really an amazing piece of music, really quite outstanding."
Something a young aspiring violinist would only have dreamt about came true for Apoorva Krishna when in November 2019 two legendary maestros John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain invited her to play the famous Shakti masterpiece Lotus Feet at the Harvard Business School organised by the Berklee India Exchange. Since then McLaughlin’s encouragement led her efforts towards merging the music of East and West.
Lalgudi tillanas have had a great fascination for her with their melodies and rhythms; they were the muse for her to compose five tillanas, and the debut album Apoorva Tillanas was released during the Cleveland Aradhana festival in 2018. Apoorva says, “With my love for Carnatic tillanas and Western harmonies, Merging Parallels came to life. The piece relates to the concept of adhara sruti bheda ragamalika, which means different ragas over different srutis and tonics -- like the world of different modes over different keys and chord changes”.
Adapting, transposing and improvising over chord changes and different styles of playing, besides the strong difference between Indian classical tuning and the Western standard tuning, was a big challenge that she had to take on. It was her abiding passion for music and the exposure to different genres of music along with her training from understanding teachers that gave her the courage to continue with the venture of composing melodies with Indian classical ideas with chord changes. Merging Parallels was a natural corollary that has swept her up to greater levels of acclaim.
Merging Parallels runs for 3.15 minutes and is set to khanda Chapu tala with ateeta eduppu. It contains 18 ragas with chord changes and is set aesthetically, abiding by the tillana format, patterns, mathematical jati prayogas, as well as a lyrical section in Sanskrit in the raga Saramati. Apoorva has been fortunate to have had other artists joining with her in this production, which has added to its musical value. Vajrashree, through her clear passionate voice, has rendered vocal support, the versatile Sunaad Anoor has brought forth his creativity with percussions like konnakol and khanjira enhancing the rhythmic aspects of the tillana. Apoorva adds, “Aleif Hamdan’s magical colours, chords and love for Indian classical music paved way for seamless transitions, rhythmic synchronisation and rock-solid harmonic support. The double bass support by Bruno Raberg has enhanced the total effect immensely.” All the musicians have played from their own homes due to the pandemic situation; nonetheless the coordination is completely seamless.
Apoorva has been part of several collaborations with both Indian and Western musicians. Shankar Mahadevan’s composition Ragamaya is a fusion of Indian classical music conceptualised with graham bhedam with contemporary arrangement. Essenceis a recent electronic track produced by Atmanam, where she plays the violin; it was shot in the heart of New York and it has been popular on Spotify.Transcendhas William Cepeda, the creator of Puerto Rican jazz and a four time Grammy nominee; this is a collaboration of Indian classical music and Latin jazz styles.
There are some very recent yet to be released works with her playing the violin which have influences of various musical genres such as Flamenco, Latin jazz, Polish jazz, Western classical, Electronic, Bluegrass, Iranian and hip-hop.
V. KARPAGALAKSHMI
