First Program For This Trip

Sunday was my first program for this trip, at the Bhowanipur Sangit Sammilani, probably the oldest music circle/presenting orgamization in Kolkata, since 1900. The gentleman currently at the head of the organization has been running it for more than 50 years. I got to the hall earlier than I had expected. The previous night there had been so much traffic that it would have taken a taxi about 30 minutes to cover the 3-4 kilometers, but I forgot that it was Sunday and arrived in 5 minutes. The first item, a vocalist, should have been in progress for about 20 minutes. Instead I found that they hadn’t even started to set up the sound system yet. The program started 1 hour and 20 minutes late, which I thought was a bit much even by the flexible standards of time in Kolkata. But several other programs I went to see later were delayed by as much as two hours, so maybe I was lucky. Certainly I was lucky that the tabla player booked to play with me, Sangram Roy, was a really fine musician. Sitting to play a concert with an accompanist that you haven’t played with before can be a real roll of the dice, and frankly the odds are usually not favorable. Everyone can play with great skill and speed, the issue is whether they have good musical sense, whether they want to make music together or just get their 15 minutes of glory. I will be happy to play with Sangram again if I get the chance, and he asked me to contact him before I come to India next, so maybe that chance will come. So, for playing a first concert, with some factor of jet lag and an unfamiliar accompanist, I was satisfied with the outcome. I think, well, I know, that the main reason I come to play in India is to see whether I can keep my cool and play the music I want to play under the circumstances of wildly varying conditions for a knowledgeable audience.