April 2021 ® ON Stagevolume 10 • issue 9 THE SCREENING EFFECT THE BEST OF OPERA, BALLET, PLAYS AND DOCUMENTARIES Chairman’s Note ortune favours the brave. We had just finished the SOI’s Spring 2020 Season and within a fortnight of it, the Flockdown was announced. In the last one year, we have spent time on creating infrastructure for the dissemination of our concerts through the digital medium and I am happy to say that some progress has been made. Several of our SOI musicians are resident and we are making use of that for creating a stockpile of recordings while also taking stock of our archives. We are examining various other ways in which our facilities at the NCPA can be utilised to conduct workshops, seminars, talks, etc. These will take some time. Please don’t mistake this, dear member, for us giving up our passion for live performances, which remain our raison d’être. However, until we can safely return to hosting performances, we want to make this interim period interesting for you. This long absence from the office seems to have naturally affected the quick decision-making atmosphere which was possible when colleagues could interact with each other face to face on a regular basis. Since this situation is not ending as early as we thought, the NCPA will have to garner its strength and depth of management by adopting creative managerial strategies to meet this challenge and to ensure that these decisions are scrupulously followed. Khushroo N. Suntook NCPA Chairman Khushroo N. Suntook Editorial Director Radhakrishnan Nair Chief Executive - PR, Marketing & Events, NCPA Pallavi Sahney Sharma Contents Editor Snigdha Hasan Consulting Editor 14 Vipasha Aloukik Pai 38 Editorial Co-ordinator Hilda Darukhanawalla Art Director Tanvi Shah Associate Art Director Hemali Limbachiya Assistant Art Director Nandkishor Sawant Graphic Designers Gautami Dave Advertising Anita Maria Pancras ([email protected]; 66223835) Tulsi Bavishi ([email protected]; 9833116584) Production Manager Mangesh Salvi Senior Digital Manager Jayesh V. Salvi the NCPA-Citi Online Edition brimming with an appreciative Cover Credit Features The Metropolitan Opera, celebrates a cherished association audience. But when audiences The Bolshoi Theatre, The National Theatre, through stellar performances. have a plethora of avenues of White Wall Screenings the SOI Music Academy look back on entertainment to choose from, their journey and how it has shaped how do we get them interested Produced by 06 Reflections them, inside the classroom, on the 28 in live performances of classical Musical repose. stage and out in the world. Improvised Times dance? By Usha Rk Editorial Office By Anil Dharker International Jazz Day is here, and 4th Floor, Todi Building, we take a look at how lovers of Mathuradas Mills Compound, 20 this beautiful genre of music are 38 Senapati Bapat Marg, The Instrumental Case celebrating this special day across The Big Band Theory Lower Parel, 08 Please note: Eclectic Connections When played as accompaniments, the world. By Benaifer J. Mirza High energy, good vibrations, In view of the fluid situation we find ourselves in, we do not think it fit Mumbai - 400013 The NCPA’s many they gracefully play second fiddle funky dance forms and a rich to publish information on upcoming events in this issue. We do hope Printer collaborations—old, new and to the vocalist, bolstering the and distinctive musical sound to be able to safely welcome you to our theatres very soon. Until then, Spenta Multimedia, Peninsula Spenta, renewed—are bringing a performance. As the cynosure of across crowded dance halls of please visit our website, www.ncpamumbai.com, and our social media Mathuradas Mill Compound, 30 unique experience for lovers solo recitals, their sound commands Culture, Covid and the State 20th-century America marked channels to keep abreast of the latest developments at the NCPA and do N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai – 400013 of cinema and the arts. From a rapt audience and encores. Ahead While the world struggles to the beginning of the big band stay safe, dear readers. screenings of short films, of Saz-e-Bahar, a festival celebrating achieve normalcy, how much era. Anurag Tagat analyses Materials in ON Stage® cannot be documentaries, opera, ballet the rich diversity of instruments in cold, hard cash countries are how the sound of the big reproduced in part or whole without the and theatre, the titles on offer Indian music, a brief acquaintance willing to spend on supporting band made jazz a universally Follow us on: written permission of the publisher. Views and opinions expressed in this magazine here include world-class, with four instruments that are part the arts and its artistes is more popular form of music that has facebook.com/NCPAMumbai critically acclaimed works as of this edition, and their leading revealing than all manner of spin influenced a bevy of artistes in are not necessarily those of the publisher. @NCPAMumbai All rights reserved. well as little-known gems that contemporary exponents. relied on by any form of public subsequent decades. are not to be missed. By Snigdha Hasan relations. By Jawhar Sircar @NCPAMumbai NCPA Booking Office 2282 4567/6654 8135/6622 3724 By Kusumita Das youtube.com/user/TheNCPAMumbai1 www.ncpamumbai.com 42 27 34 Kaleidoscope 14 The Gift of Music Spectator Sport Your window to the latest in the The Graduates With a series of select Indian and The biggest applause in the performing arts across India and We look forward to your feedback and suggestions. Please do drop us an Seven graduating students of Western classical music concerts, performing arts is auditoria the world. email at [email protected]. COMMONS BERNHARD/WIKIMEDIA HANS OPINION Reflections Musical repose. By Anil Dharker If music be the food of sleep, play on. With apologies to Shakespeare, of course, who would imagine that the great music we so avidly listen to in concert halls could be prescribed by doctors for insomnia? There’s a new science out there, called Arts on Prescription. The U.K. currently offers this for people with mental health problems. Music plays an important part in the therapy; additionally, it also helps people relax and sleep soundly. The prescription can last three weeks to three months, after which presumably, listening to soothing music becomes a habit and no prescription is required. Music dosages? ‘Six longitudinal music lines to help slow down a listener’s heart Lune’ (a description of moonlight) and his sleep studies using the Pittsburgh Sleep rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels ‘Reverie’ round up the list. Quality Index’. It is enough to make you of stress hormone cortisol. Debussy might be a master of creating a toss and turn in your bed. Nevertheless, As a genre though, classical music works dreamlike atmosphere, but since you hear the role of music in inducing better quality best. A survey of 600 people conducted by the music played by piano, we don’t hear sleep has been established clearly, and for a research group showed that as many as the original song’s disquieting lyrics, “Our that we don’t need a doctor’s prescription or 32 per cent of participants chose classical love is a dream, but in my reverie/I can see a visit to the chemist. Besides, it is the only music as the best relaxant. Apparently, the that this love was meant for me/Only a drug which is good if it becomes addictive. right kind of music works on something poor fool never schooled in the whirlpool/ But it can’t be every kind of music. called HRV (Heart Rate Variability) which Of romance could be so cruel as you are to Certainly not heavy metal. Or big band jazz measures how efficiently a person’s heart me…” Luckily, we can ignore the sadness or for that matter, many pieces of classical rate adapts to the changing demands of a and go happily to sleep. music. Imagine trying to sleep listening working day. Speak of sleep and you think of dreams. to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with its Bach wrote The Well-Tempered Clavier While writing this, it struck me with a cannon shots, or Holst’s ‘Mars, the Bringer in which he said the 24 preludes and sudden jolt of pain that I have never had of War’ from The Planets. Sleep experts (it fugues were, “for the profit and use of a dream with music in it. But a study in is a lucrative profession, by the way) tell musical youth desirous of learning, and psychomusicology made me feel better: us that the tempo of the music makes a especially for the pastime of those already they found only six per cent of participants difference; the best is music with a rhythm skilled in this study.” From this complex remembered dreams with music. And the of 60 beats per minute. As we fall asleep, our composition, the Prelude No.1, with ones who have musical dreams are more heartbeat slows down to about that level. its simple beauty consisting of broken likely to be professional musicians or those William Congreve said this rather well: chords is wonderful to sleep by. But the who listen to it for extended periods. These ‘Music hath charms to soothe the piece of music considered the very best in lucky few use their dreams creatively. In savage breast this field is ‘Wiegenlied’ by Brahms. Not fact, Paul McCartney of the Beatles and To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.’ surprising because the translated title is Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones said The most relaxing song ever created is ‘Cradle Song’, so it is a lullaby which goes: they dreamt full songs which they quickly ‘Weightless’ by a group called Marconi “Guten Abend, gut nacht!/ Mit Rosen wrote down and used.