Artistes Rahul Sharma and Zakir Hussain drive around US and Canada doing six concerts in eight days. Result: a live in concert album
Last year sitar maestro Rahul Sharma and Ustad Zakir Hussain travelled around the US and Canada to do traditional Hindustani classical music concerts. Every day the duo would drive down to different cities from Buffalo and Ottawa to Boston and New York. The two ended up doing six concerts in eight days.
“We would travel for four to five hours every day and reach the venue and perform. Hussainsaab was driving and I was navigating. It was a memorable tour,” says Rahul Sharma. He adds, “We never discussed music or our concert while traveling.
We would have loads of fun conversations including cricket but nothing really about the concert at hand or our own music. We would listen to other artistes on the car stereo. So though we were travelling together, most of our music was unrehearsed.”
The result of all the travelling and performing came out as a live recording of the duo’s San Francisco concert in the form of an album called Rhythm of Love, Charukeshi Live in San Francisco.
Rahul Sharma has been perceived as a fusion artiste because he has done many solo fusion records and collaborations
albums. But he has been itching to come out with a purely Hindustani classical one for a long time now. “I was really eager to come out with a purely classical music album. Also, very few live in concert albums come out of India, so I am glad that I decided to come out with this one,” says Rahul.
He has done many collaborations but it’s his first album with Zakir Hussain. “He is a very challenging musician and is very inspiring. I have very fond memories of this tour.”
The performance was mainly based on Chahrukeshi raga and 12 beat rhythm cycles Dhrut Ek Taal. “It’s got this romantic feeling on the santoor. The concert ends on a crescendo,” he says, adding, “It’s how a painter first draws the outlines, then fills colours and finally the whole picture reveals itself.”
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