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Review

Sense World is a new addition to the growing number of labels dedicated to Indian classical music. Started in 2002 Sense World is based in UK, with a studio in Gujarat. Many of the albums are live concert recordings of the Saptak Music Festival held every year in Ahmedabad, Gujarat every year in winter.

This CD by Tarun Bhattacharya presents a studio recording. One of the most prominent santoor artists of today, Tarun Bhattacharya, is a disciple of the celebrated sitar player Ravi Shankar.

The cd features raag Kalavati, a joyful Carnatic raaga (Valachi) adopted to North Indian music. It is a pentatonic (audav-audav) raaga with the scale S-G-P-D-n-S' , where n denotes komal nishadh (R is sometimes just touched upon making this a hexatonic according to some). The first track is the long alaap, moving from a slow paced exposition to a fast rhythmic jor. Tarun Bhattacharya has made some changes to santoor to increase its range and also to be able to play meend (glides). The increase in range is apparent, esp. with some of the lows played around 5th minute and at the end that I've never heard before on santoor. Later parts of alaap, the rhythmic Jor, is lively and fast paced, as Kalavati demands.

The second track continues Kalavati with a composition set to Rupak taal and then a composition set to dhruth teen taal. The play by Tarun Bhattacharya is again crisp, energetic and lively. This gives an ample opportunity to both Tarun Bhattacharya and the tabla accompanist Ramkumar Mishra, to show their virtuosity and mastery over their instruments. They also combine well. Tarun Bhattacharya tries a bit of experimentation without going overboard and in anycase, the joyful mood of kalavati allows for a bit more experimentation than a serous would. Towards the end the pace gets frenzy and the artists do well to play crisply at faster tempos too.

The third and the last track is a dhun based on a Rabindra Sangeet, a genre that represents couple of thousand compositions by Rabindranath Tagore. The dhun is lilting and I suppose if you knew the original it would sound better.

Overall 3.5 stars for the music and 4.0 stars for the recording. Recommended.

CD Information

Tracks

Nu.	Title	Time	Music
1	Kalavati - Alaap	28:55
2	Kalavati - Rupak Taal	29:24
3	Dhun - Rabindra Sangeet	12:39

Liner Notes

Good liner notes with profile of the artist and music. Another important welcome feature is the embedding of artist rack information in the CD so that when played on the PC or a data capable CD player, you can see the artist and track information.