Spirits were high at Highway Village on 1 October 2006 when Trancemedia kicked off the season with Jazz Fusion Curry. That hugely talented ensemble of musicians Blue Fire fronting as a wonderful foil for the spectacular musical feats of S Harikumar on his seven-stringed electric violin, started up the show.

The music was an amazing fusion of sound of tabla, electric drums, keyboards and guitars and of course that soul stirring electric violin played to perfection by S Harikumar ’s genius. Sanjay Maroo on drums had the crowd grooving to his beat. This was the perfect start to an experimental and fun-charged evening.

Fusion is just catching on and the erstwhile iron clad boundaries of pure Indian classical music are being breached slowly but surely. If anything, Harikumar’s fusion take on Raghupati Ragav Raja Ram and Vande Mataram was so singularly good that fusion music of western with classical Indian could go down smoothly as a brave new musical trend.

he second part of the evening belonged to Interplay. The legendary Don Saigal joined his daughter Sonia Saigal on stage and thrilled the spectators. Adrian de Sousa was on the drums, Rishad Mistry on bass and Harmeet Manseta on keyboards. Manseta’s magic on the keyboards went over very well with the crowd. The show wound to a reluctant end way past midnight with the audience wishing Interplay would return to give them some more of their truly beautiful jazz recitals.

Violin virtuoso S Harikumar along with his ensemble “Blue Fire” , The light at the top of his bow does justice to the way Harikumar mesmerized the packed audience who defied rain and thunderstorm to be there for the event.



A section of the crowd that was treated to soul stirring music.



Harikumar in a close up with brilliant lead guitarist Baiju from Kerala. The blue violin that Hari uses is a seven string one of which he is the first user.

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