Kirtana Kumar, Priya Mendens and Shalini Subramanian join Thermal And A Quarter at The Highland Nectar, a spacious and lively bar occupying pride of place at the Grand Arrival Court of the ITC Royal Gardenia. Look forward to an evening of uplifting performances as the divas regale you with their chosen favourites and lend their signature flourish to TAAQ’s unique repertoire.

Bangalore-based actor and theatre personality KIRTANA KUMAR keeps her fine singing talent carefully obscured though, in an unguarded moment, she admitted to us that “in my dark (albeit lovely) past, I used to sing.” Her most recent singing gigs were for Kevin Oliver’s “Shakuntala” in Dubai and her own production (with husband Konarak Reddy) “One Night in Paris” in Bangalore. She is currently on tour with Anil Abraham’s “Gentlemen”.

Few music-loving Bangaloreans need an introduction to PRIYA MENDENS. For 15 years she has been performing lead roles in musicals such as “Hello Dolly”, “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Grease”, “Kiss of the Spider Woman”, etc. She has shared stage with TAAQ in the past and looks forward to a memorable reunion.

SHALINI SUBRAMANIAN is equally excited about discovering new soundscapes as she is about designing clothes for her fashion label “Plantation House”. Trained in Indian classical voice from the age of four, she was influenced by her dad’s indiscriminate attention to harmonies that range from refrigerator drones to tanpura tones. She loves Hindustani classical music, classical and contemporary jazz, and enjoys folk music from all over the world. She has previously joined TAAQ in concert.

OCT 29 at Highland Nectar, ITC Royal Gardenia, 1, Residency Road, Bangalore. Entry free (it’s not some fancy invite-only do). Be there with friends.

RSVP here

The post Gig alert: TAAQ and the Divas, Oct 29, Bangalore appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

For some people it was a lonely Valentine’s Day. And this goes out especially to them.

When we played in Pune last year we decided we weren’t going back without cake and cookies from the famous German Bakery. Enjoying them in Bangalore the next day, we didn’t foresee having to reflect on that simple pleasure like this.

Terror could have struck then as it did on the night of February 13, 2010. But we lived to write this. And we shall make the most of the life and joy granted to us.

It is somewhat edifying that we were able to reach out to Pune on February 14. Opus Pune webcast the One Small Love concert live to its patrons.

Thank you for turning up (and turning down your other Valentine’s Day engagements) and for your support and encouragement right through this initiative.

Foremost, our thanks go to the fabulous folks at Trumpit and Opus – Carlton, Shonali, Priyanka, Venkat, Adrian and all the staff whose names fail us but whose smiling faces fill our minds when we recollect that lovely evening. Thank you for event support, your gracious hospitality and for making our artists and guests feel at home at Opus in the Creek, such a tranquil setting with its giant Buddha and tippling fish.

Thank you Konarak Reddy, Gerard Machado, Ravichandra Kulur, Alwyn Fernandes, Gaurav Vaz and Karan Joseph for your soul-stirring performances. A special thanks to Vasu, Varun, Jishnu, Montry, Pavan and Sanjeev, the awesome musicians of Swarathma, for playing a pulse-quickening show. In a market where live performances can hardly pay the bills, these wonderful people unquestioningly played for love.

For making the One Small Love concert a resounding success we thank Niranjan, the man at the soundboard whose admirable patience with the tantrums of rock stars is legend.

Thanks to Saswati Chakravarty, C K Meena, Prakash Belawadi and Harish Bijoor for articulating their special messages to our audience because rock stars (with the notable exception of Gaurav Vaz) are so pathetic at making speeches.

For his time-saving and completely impromptu comic interlude, a whopper of a thank-you goes out to our friendly neighbourhood Bollywood star-in-the-making Rajeev Ravindranathan.

Thanks to Merwyn Rodrigues of JumpMedia, Dubai, who accepted a brief that few designers would, and delivered a poster and profile image for our Facebook page in just a few hours.

We thank Smita and the very talented and even-tempered folks at Kieon for online support and web design.

Thanks to Kartik Iyer, Praveen Das and the beautiful minds at Happy Creative Services for dreaming up the original One Small Love music video. Special thanks also to Ashvin Naidu of Avakkai Films.

Thank you, PG Santhosh and his colleagues at MIPL-GraphicsAllAround, for the One Small Love giveaway stickers and for the big yellow smiley that graced the stage throughout the show.

Thank you, Gaurav Manchanda, for being Ayrton Senna to our guests when the cab guys ditched us at the eleventh hour.

We thank Dean Umesh PN, professors Srijayanth and Ananth and research fellow Bindu of the TAAQ Roadie Institute of Technology (RIT) for running the show like a smoothie, and especially for committing themselves to the odious task of filming people drawing smileys under hot lights.

We are immensely grateful to Facebook and WordPress for their fabulous (and free) online products, which make social messaging and online publishing look ridiculously easy. Ten years ago, we would have struggled to drum up opt-in support for an event like this. This year, we didn’t phone a single journalist.

In the same breath, we thank Facebook evangelists such as Martin D’Souza for spreading the message of One Small Love to their networks. Thanks also to the 1,300+ fans of the One Small Love page for your endorsement of this movement. You have a lot to look forward to.

We have had many managers and we love and respect all of them. But no one merits a bigger ovation than Divya Joseph, who deserves a lifetime royalty from Adidas for living the slogan ‘Impossible is Nothing’. The list of things she deserves to be thanked for cannot be accommodated here, so let just it be said that she was the smile on the face of One Small Love.

Thanks to Velu Shankar, a long-time friend, philosopher and guide of Thermal And A Quarter, for his advice and encouragement.

One Small Love begins at home. Our families deserve our utmost love and gratitude for their support and suffering in the face of our absences, late nights and many missed dinners. Since this suffering, and our solicitations for support, are not about to stop in the near future, we thank you in advance.

The show must go on, no matter what threats loom up to stop us. And we will do everything in our power as musicians and artists to fight violence and hate with messages of love, tolerance and freedom. To paraphrase Harry Belafonte: “You can cage the singer but not the song.”

The concert is only the beginning. In the future that is about to unfold, One Small Love will reach out to the world in many ways and touch many lives.

Let’s draw the line each day.

The post One Big Thankyou appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Ravi’s flute has taken him around the world — New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Festival Hall, the Passionskirche in Berlin, Mumbai’s NCPA Auditorium, etc. He has shared the stage with Dr M. Balamuralikrishna, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar, Steve Smith and Vital Information, Charlie Mariano, Hariharan, S P Balasubramaniam, Kumaresh and Ganesh, Tarun Bhattacharya, Hans Hartmann, Karsh Kale, Amit Heri and Tanmoy Bose.

Join Ravi as he performs with Thermal And A Quarter and other musicians at ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’, a convention of peace-loving citizens, at Opus in the Creek in Bangalore on February 14. Entry is free.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Ravichandra Kulur draws the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).