Mehfil

Mehfil, the concert put on by my on campus organization, SAPA, went off very successfully. Jan Popper theater was completely filled, although I do feel bad that they turned people away because they were at capacity. Some of our Ethno Department faculty also stopped by which was awesome. This show was a concert with some of our very own talented UCLA musicians and dancers who perform Indian Classical Arts. It was cool to see students perform their own creative works on stage.

The piece I performed was with my friends, Cameron Hovsepian and Jake Jamieson. Cameron is a very talented guitarist who plays many styles, in this piece he used his training in the Turkish Saz to adapt to Indian Classical Music. Jake is an accomplished percussionist who plays almost any percussion instrument and is also well versed on the tabla. For this piece he played the cajon and the tabla. We put together a rough outline for the piece giving us a lot of room to improvise and feed off of each others musical ideas. Cameron was able to adapt to the Indian style and I taught him a few melodic lines which were quite complicated for someone who has never studied Indian Music. I am grateful that this show gave me the chance to perform this piece which I put together along with my friends/musicians.

Getty Center

I meant to post something about my memorable weekend February 13-14th a while back, but I am just getting to it now. Both of those days I had the amazing opportunity to perform at the Getty Center. I performed with an awesome group of musicians and we provided music for my sister's dance performance. Believe it or not, I have never even stepped foot near the Getty Center till that day even though I have lived in LA my whole life. It is such an incredible place, especially the theater they have there. Although it isn't too big, it has such a nice environment and great acoustics. Usually they put on concerts regularly but this was the first time they featured Indian Music and Dance.

My sister, Mythili Prakash, is a pretty well known Indian Classical Dancer and the Getty had asked her to put on a show based on the theme of Love since it was Valentines Day weekend. So she chose to represent the "Season's of Love", the different emotions that come with each season such as Fall, Winter, etc. I had worked on composing some of the music for this show so it was great to hear and perform my own compositions. Both shows were sold out on both days and people really enjoyed the show.

I felt very fortunate to add the Getty Center to the list of prestigious venues I have performed at. Plus, what an amazing view of Los Angeles from the top of that hill.