Last weekend Poetry on Drums held its annual recital. I was so proud of all my students and how they played! Many students passed their level 3 this year, and I know it was a big challenge for a lot of them. It's so rewarding to see children, some not even ten years old yet, playing such challenging music so well.
The level 3 students demonstrated compositions from all six gharanas of Tabla this year. This was because as part of their level 3 training they completed a listening project where they studied performances from Tabla players of each gharana. I think they learned a lot from that experience!
As a teacher, I'm always learning more from these performances, just like my students are. One thing I learned from looking over the photos is that I need to teach my students to smile when they perform. :)
Equally as exciting as these advanced students was POD's really promising batch of young students from the 2016-17 school year. Many were unable to attend the recital due to travel, but those who did perform gave some very wonderful presentations. I'm so happy with the enthusiasm of this class!
After the children performed, I was able to convince one adult's group to also give a performance. They presented my guru Pandit Sudhir Mainkar's development for the famous Delhi kaida "Dha Tete Dha Tete DhaDha Tete DhageTinakena." The transcription for this kaida was three pages long! After some creative editing we got it down to only two pages. :) This was a real challenge for the whole group, especially because one student had to drop out at the last minute because his wife had a baby (congratulations Saurabh!), so everyone had to help cover his portion of the performance at the last minute. Even I helped a little bit!
Again, congratulations to all the students who worked so hard this year and earned the right to move to the next level in training! I'm looking forward to next year already!
A big thanks to Harshwinder Singh for taking all the great photos (and video) on this page.