Amjad Ali Khan’s musical extravaganza

Amjad Ali Khan’s musical extravaganza
By Ananya Mukherjee
Singapore
 
 
When Sarod Samrat Ustad Amjad Ali Khan narrates the intricacies of his craft, you are bound to pay undivided attention and listen.
During the first session of his concert at the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore last week, he started with demonstrating the two different ways of playing the sarod. Whilst using the fingertips on the strings can result in a dull-toned melodic line, using the grooved edges of the fingernails on the first two fingers, as taught by his father and guru Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, creates the signature singing tone from the instrument, he explained.

 
The dynastic concert was one of the key highlights of the Festival of Indian Classical Music and Dance organized by the Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society (SIFAS) and included the maestro’s two sarod-playing sons, Amaan Ali Khan and Ayaan Ali Khan. Khan opened with solo performances of his own creations; two melodious compositions based on raga Kamalshree and raga Ganesh Kalyan, accompanied by Pandit Tanmay Bose and Pandit Mithilesh Kumar Jha on the tabla.
 
At the beginning of each raga, he slowly outlined the melody over the tamboura, giving each melodic phrase an individual character with an expert use of dynamics. And in the improvisations — especially in the Ram Dhun, in 14-beat cycles over the tablas — he kept the audience enthralled by creating his own original shapes. Placing important notes between beats; he used trembling-pitch ornamentation, but without overdoing it all the while. The phrases began mildly, became distended and mellowed into silence.
 
The second session was the more energetic part of the evening, when the two young maestros played with amazing power and precision lighting up the audience with an excellent jugalbandi of raga Desh. While Amaan’s forte appeared to be his composed, meticulous and technically correct strokes, Ayaan kept the audience mesmerized with his high level of immaculate energy and improvisations. The concert ended with Khan joining his sons for a jugalbandi in raga Kirwani, a Carnatic raga. It started off with all of them playing in unison, with no percussion. Later, the guru unfolded phrases for each son to follow. Gradually the music intensified, the rhythm accelerated, and finally the piece ended with thunderous unison passages.
 
In short, a musical treat Singapore would remember for years.