String and beat masters live today at Chowdiah

BENGALURU: Violinist Ambi Subramaniam and Grammy award winning Debashish Bhattacharya, along with percussionists Tanmoy Bose on tabla and Patri Satish Kumar on mridangam, will be performing at Chowdiah Memorial Hall, 7.30 pm onwards today. It is part of KK Murthy Memorial Music Fest.Ambi says that they have not decided what they would play on stage. It would largely done on-the-go, which makes it all the more enjoyable. “As long as you have some sort of structure in place, you can improvise,” he says. Ambi is the son of the famous violinist and composer L Subramaniam and says with a chuckle, “My father sometimes announces that he would be playing a composition on stage and presents something else”.

Ambi is playing with Debashish for the first time but he has with the percussionists before. “Infact the three of us (percussionists and Ambi) are even releasing our album today,” he says.
Ambi says that collaborations are always fun. “You have to listen to the other person, like two people are telling the same story”. He respects Debasish as a “complete musician because he has soul and speed”.
Ambi also plays the piano, but “terribly”, he adds. “I wish I could be better at many instruments but even mastering one takes a lifetime”. He works as a composer too and has to understand various instruments before writing out an orchestral.

Ambi admires Hans Florian Zimmer, the German composer who has made popular scores for films such as The Dark Knight Trilogy and Interstellar. “His orchestral music with electronic sound is amazing. It is very hard to merge the two, it can turn out disastrous.”

Brought up in Bengaluru, he says he heads to B-flat for great music and Chowdiah for classical performances. There are shows that he misses in the city because of his travels but his recent regret was the Coldplay contest organised in Houston. “I had bought the tickets and the show was cancelled because of the floods. Insignificant in the larger scale of what happened, but still a regret,” he says.