Breaking New Ground With Her Veena

Jayanthi Kumaresh, recipient of this year’s Indira Sivasailam Endowment medal, is an articulate musician who is unafraid of breaking new ground with her music.

Not confining the subtle veena to the Carnatic music stage, she has taken it to new and diverse audiences through cross-genre collaborations.

To understand her brand of creativity, we only need to listen to her solo album Mysterious Duality. In a relatively short album of original musical content, she explores the potential of her chosen instrument. She superimposes layers of her own spontaneous veena-play around raga-based compositions (created specifically for the album by vocalist Abhishek Raghuram and violinist Kumaresh, her husband). To the familiar strains of the veena in the main and supporting roles, she adds exotic touches like the use of double-bass-like plucking and Western chords to create a rich, harmonious soundscape entirely with the veena.

Considerable variety and excitement mark her collaborations as well. Her concerts with maestro Zakir Hussain on the tabla are dubbed “Jugalbandi-s — a pairing of equals”. The divide in their experience and genres seems to disappear on stage, as they build off each other’s energy and ideas. In Strings Attached, duet-concerts with Kumaresh, she effortlessly matches his spirited violin play. When Anil Srinivasan accompanies her on his piano, we forget the hallowed origins of the veena and enjoy the pure play of notes. In a unique collaboration of Western and Indian classical musicians, the sound of her veena blends beautifully with the Philharmonia Orchestra of the U.K. Another ambitious project of hers was the founding of the Indian National Orchestra (INO) in 2011. The INO has top names from a variety of musical traditions in India teaming up to perform orchestral style music rooted in Indian ragas and improvisation techniques. While the idea is close to her heart, it remains to be seen whether an orchestra with such a large team of stellar solo-artists is sustainable in the long run.