By Shilpi Sambhamurty
As part of the five-day annual Classical Music Conference (4 to 8 January 2017) organised by West Bengal State Music Academy, Dept. of I & C Affairs, Govt. of West Bengal,Kadri Gopalnath (C-saxophone) presented a jugalbandhi with Pravin Godhkhindi (H-flute), on 6 January at Rabindra Sadan in Kolkata. Their accompanists were Bangalore K. Praveen (mridangam) and Subhankar Banerjee (tabla).
Bengaluru-based vainika RK Padmanabha played to a packed hall on his Saraswati Veena along with Chandan Kumar (flute), in a venu-veena combination. Jayachandra Rao (mridangam) and PV Sairam (ghatam) provided percussion accompaniment. The concert was part of the Swami Vivekananda Music Festival held at the Ramakrishna Mission in Golpark, Kolkata that takes place on 12 January every year to celebrate the birthday of Swami Vivekananda.
The Dover Lane Music Conference held in Kolkata is one of India's leading classical music conferences. In the recently concluded four-day-long festival (22 to 25 Janauary 2017), leading Carnatic vocalist Sudha Ragunathan performed on the concluding day. She was accompanied by S. Skandasubramanian (mridangam), Pakala Ramadas (violin) and R. Raman (morsing).
Some other Carnatic musicians who have taken part in recent years in the 65-year-old festival are L. Subramaniam, Bombay Jayashri Ramnath, and Shashank Subramanyam.