January 2021 ® ON Stagevolume 10 • issue 6 New Year, New Beginnings The NCPA films its first play. Live performances from across genres are in the pipeline, to be presented, with your safety first. Chairman’s Note The only certainty about the future of 2021 is that it is ambiguous. Today one hears that hospitals in Mumbai have several hundred empty beds for lack of patients. Excellent news indeed, but within the next half an hour you hear about several hundred new cases in another area. So how do we plan? And how expensive is the creation of safe places and proper protocols of health to avoid infections among artistes, technicians, the audiences, etc.? It is no better in all the advanced countries and Maharashtra, in fact, is improving faster than most states in India, as well as in the U.K. Nevertheless, we have to plan ambitiously. We have the luxury of several fine-quality musicians in residence, and are proceeding with proper planning and conceptualising to fill our empty slots with quality fare. We are already in the process of doing so and hope to invite well-known artistes to accompany the SOI Chamber Orchestra on its steady path to enrich the music scene in Mumbai. Our Indian music, dance and theatre departments are on an equally ambitious programme and all they need is the confidence to allow them reign in their creativity. So please bear in mind, dear friends, that the NCPA is not standing still. It is planning to change the way people will listen to music, observe theatre, visit screened performances, and present the arts to you as soon as possible so that the clamour to return is satisfied at least a bit. And our attempts to bring our archives and future performances to your home digitally have already a dedicated team working at this important venture. One thing is for sure. Our effort will not flag nor our eternal optimism be dented. Khushroo N. Suntook NCPA Chairman Khushroo N. Suntook Editorial Director Radhakrishnan Nair Editor Snigdha Hasan Consulting Editor Contents Vipasha Aloukik Pai Editorial Co-ordinator Hilda Darukhanawalla 12 Art Director Tanvi Shah Associate Art Director Hemali Limbachiya Assistant Art Director Nandkishor Sawant Graphic Designers Gautami Dave Sanjana Suvarna Advertising Anita Maria Pancras ([email protected]; 66223835) Tulsi Bavishi ([email protected]; 9833116584) Production Manager Mangesh Salvi Senior Digital Manager Jayesh V. Salvi Cover Credit Roshan M Dutt Produced by Features Editorial Office 4th Floor, Todi Building, Mathuradas Mills Compound, Senapati Bapat Marg, us to have faith, even through the worst Lower Parel, 06 of it all. By Shayonnita Mallik Mumbai - 400013 Reflections The age of wisdom. By Anil Dharker Printer Spenta Multimedia, Peninsula Spenta, 12 Mathuradas Mill Compound, Sitar: Then and Now N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel, 07 Of the Indian and Indian-origin artistes Mumbai – 400013 In Conversation whose work has been nominated for The first in a series of talks with renowned the Grammys this year, two are sitar Materials in ON Stage®cannot be reproduced artistes presented digitally by the NCPA players. From Ravi Shankar’s famous in part or whole without the written saw Zakir Hussain and Zane Dalal discuss collaborations with George Harrison, permission of the publisher. Views and opinions expressed in this magazine are not the convergence and divergence of Yehudi Menuhin and Philip Glass to its necessarily those of the publisher. All rights Indian and Western classical music contemporary use in a popular Puerto reserved. traditions, and the power of art to unify Rican singer’s EP, what is it that makes the and overcome hardships. sitar a much-loved instrument for global NCPA Booking Office jugalbandi? In this brief history of the 2282 4567/6654 8135/6622 3724 sitar, Dr. Suvarnalata Rao debunks myths www.ncpamumbai.com 08 related to its origin, and sheds light on Grief, God and the Coronavirus how its ever-evolving structure allowed Funny, tragic and hopeful, Bruce for versatility and a rich sound, making it Guthrie’s Sea Wall is a story that teaches a self-sufficient instrument. THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, ROGERS FUND, 1958 20 humour-infused production 16 Hasati and how it was brought 36 37 Great Music is Gender-Blind about by a long, fruitful Learning the Kaleidoscope Historically, the works of many relationship with the NCPA. Digital Ropes Your window to the latest in the women composers did not At a time when the performing arts across India and quite make it into the canon. virtual world has become the world. It is perhaps why the female 28 indispensable in all aspects sensibility continues to be New Avenues of our lives, the NCPA, viewed through a celebratory The success of the first edition supported by HSBC, is 38 lens—like a rare event, so to say. of Winter Fiesta, held online, conducting an online The Performing Arts Dispatch We take a look at some of these has opened up a new world workshop on live streaming A series on houses of culture from prolific composers who did not of possibilities of learning and and home production for around the world. In focus this get their due and speak to a teaching the performing arts. performing artistes. month: Teatro Colón. contemporary composer and a By Ela Das musician to understand why. By Beverly Pereira 32 Letters to the Editor: A Daughter Remembers 20 In Soumitra Chatterjee’s passing, I’ve just been reading the December issue of the magazine! Bravo for In the Groove and Spirit of the world has lost a theatre legend, assembling such an interesting collection of articles. Khushroo’s piece Indo Jazz cinema icon, great littérateur was excellent. Why are we always so greedy? — Dame Felicity Lott, On the surface, Indo jazz may and a liberal, fearless voice. In an soprano sound like a strange amalgam of interview with ON Stage, Poulami two decidedly different musical Basu reflects on the special bond I loved the interview with Dan Brown, particularly the last question and universes, but in reality it is a she shared with him as daughter answer. I have read practically all his books. But I was not aware of his fascinating experiment with and fellow theatre actor-director. musical talent, until I read the piece. — M. Balachandran powerful results. Anurag Tagat By Snigdha Hasan talks to veteran musicians to discover how the genre is about Follow us on: experimentation, improvisation 34 and spirituality. On a Literary Note facebook.com/NCPAMumbai From scholarly works and biographies to films, Swapnokalpa @NCPAMumbai Dasgupta, Head–Programming 24 @NCPAMumbai Humorous Aspects (Dance) at the NCPA, in As part of a series on artistes’ collaboration with her team, youtube.com/user/TheNCPAMumbai1 reflections on dance productions recommends essential reading they have presented at the and viewing to widen your NCPA, Priyadarsini Govind understanding of and delve deeper We look forward to your feedback and suggestions. Please do drop us an discusses the conception of her into the genre. email at [email protected]. OPINION Reflections The age of wisdom. By Anil Dharker New Year celebrations, to borrow a phrase, are the triumph of hope over experience. We dance, we toot, we fling our arms in the air and wish each other Happy New Year overlooking in our cheerful enthusiasm one irrefutable fact: whatever the disposition of the year gone by and the one to come, you and I and everyone else is irrevocably, permanently and with one hundred per cent certainty, one year older. In a world which belongs to the young (as we are continuously told), that should be depressing, and yet we engage in boisterous festivity. However, should those of us over 60 composers who lived longer: Beethoven to Cubism at 28 and Sylvia Plath was only really mourn the passing of time? A recent died at 56, but it is his Ninth Symphony 31 when she stuck her head in the oven, study by the respected New England Journal that is regarded as the greatest of them all. but had already published her two works of Medicine should be music to your ears if Similarly, Haydn, who lived to the ripe old of seminal poetry. On the other hand, you are at the stage where people call you age of 77, is remembered for his last few Virginia Woolf, Jackson Pollock, Paul a senior citizen. The study found that works, particularly Symphony No 92 and Cézanne and Alfred Hitchcock did their the most productive phase for people is the Second Cello Concerto. best work in their later years. between 60 and 70 years of age. The second In 1963, British-American psychologist For some reason, which science must most productive is, an even bigger surprise, Raymond Cattell introduced the concept really investigate, conductors live really 70 to 80 years, and the third most is between of ‘fluid intelligence’ and ‘crystallised long, so they are prime ‘specimens’ to study 50 and 60 years. Apparently, we reach the intelligence’. Fluid intelligence, the how the human brain changes with age. peak of our potential at 60 and continue at ability to solve new problems or make Zubin Mehta became Music Director of a high level till 80. This, of course, makes a revolutionary discoveries, is highest when the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the age mockery of the mandated retirement age in people are in their 20s and 30s: Einstein of 26 when he was likened to ‘Prospero at most countries—in India, that’s 60, in most published four groundbreaking papers the centre of the storm, summoning forth European countries, it’s 65, Russia makes it including his Theory of Relativity, at thunder and lightning.’ Would it not be odd 60.5 (and 55.5 for women), in China it’s 60 26; Newton was 22 when he discovered if at 84, he continued to be just as exuberant for men and 50 for women, Bulgaria and Gravity and Stephen Hawking was 28 and dynamic? Think of Lorin Maazel, child the Czech Republic, obviously following when he formulated his theory of Black prodigy, when he debuted at eight.