Shashank Subramanyam

Shashank Subramanyam: venu flutes
Hariharan Sundarraman: mridangam

Shashank Subramanyam, perhaps the most important instrumentalist of Carnatic music at the moment, will give a concert in Helsinki at Balder Hall on Sunday, October 22. In Finland, Shashank’s concert will be the first one in Finland, where he plays the southern tradition of Indian classical music, Carnatic music.

Shashank Subramanyam is a respected musician and master of the South Indian venu flute. Shashank, who started his career as a 6-year-old prodigy, has performed around the world and released more than 70 albums during his more than 30-year career. In addition to his extensive career as an artist, Shashank has done pioneering work as a developer and reformer of playing the venu flute. Shashank’s Carnatic music teachers were singers, and his playing technique enables his sonorous and idea-rich expression based on the human voice.

Known as a versatile and open-minded musician, Shashank, in addition to traditional Carnatic music, has collaborated a lot with Hindustani musicians as well as Western jazz musicians and has performed in e.g. as a soloist with symphony orchestras. He has also been seen at the Turku Music Festival in 2013, when he premiered a piece by Eero Hämeenniemi, one of the foremost Finnish contemporary composers, together with the Meta4 quartet and Sai Giridharia (mridangam). Last New Year’s Eve, he performed in full Musiikkitalo at the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra’s celebration concert “Les Indes Galantes” as a soloist together with mridangam player Parupalli Phalgun. He performed the Finnish premiere of Eero Hämeenniemi’s composition Sprezzatura.

Shashank collaborates with musicians from India and around the world, such as John McLaughlin, Symphony Orchestras, and Denmark’s Pierre Dorge, whose quintet he performed with at this year’s Copenhagen Jazz Festival.

Playing with Shashank is Hariharan Sundarraman, a skillful mridangam player of a young generation, whose guru is one of the most prominent mridangam players of today, Patri Satish Kumar. Hariharan played in Shantala Subramanyam’s trio when they visited Finland in March this year.

Shashank’s concert is organized in cooperation with the Helsinki Jazz Association and the World Music Center, and the concert is part of the Etnosoi! festival program and the jaZZanti concert series. The concert follows Carnatic music concert practices, i.e. there is no intermission and it lasts about two hours.

Shashank and Hariharan will also perform in Oulu at Pohjankartano school (Leevimadetojan katu 1) on 21.10 at 17.oo. The concert is organized by O-India association, tickets 28/23 €, in advance lippu.fi. More information on O-India’s FB page.

Photos: Sakari Puhakka

The concert is supported by City of Helsinki, Svenska Kulturfonden, The Finnish Music Foundation and The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike).