VENU NADAM: A FESTIVE TRAIL / Vamshika Quintet / Review

 

VENU NADAM: A FESTIVE TRAIL

Vamshika Quintet

The Arts House Chamber

Sunday (18 January 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 January 2026 with the title "A celebration of Indian flutes".

Vamshika Quintet is an ensemble, part of the 10-year-old Brahmastra Arts House, that celebrates the culture and sounds of Indian bamboo flutes, the bansuri and venu. Established by Niranjan Pandian, the quintet – also comprising Logindran Govindarasu, Vishnu Veluri, Sabapathy Tirupathi Ramana and Ravindra Kumar – presented a 100-minute concert with seven works showcasing the breadth and depth of these instruments.

There are few sounds as haunting or beautiful as the Indian flute, which has a mellowness in timbre that eludes its Western and Chinese counterparts. When heard as a group of instruments with varying registers, the pleasure is multiplied manifold. To keep the ensemble, backed by violinist Sreeranjani Muthu Subramanian and drummers Lalit Kumar Ganesh (tabla) and Jayagowtham Annadurai (mridangam), in time and rhythm, the works were conducted by the quintet’s visiting mentor from India Vidwan Amith Nadig and Carnatic music veteran Lazar Sebastine.

The evening opened with Sri Muthuswamy Dikshithar’s Vathapi Ganapathim, an invocation to Lord Ganesh often heard as a prelude to temple festivals and ceremonies. Its lively rhythms were captured in solos and in various groupings.

When all five flautists play together, a choral effect is created, as heard in Vidwan’s Dream Garden. While polyphony was not sustained for long, it was the dominant heterophony that created an audible illusion of multiple sonic layers. Modern pop influences were also included in the arrangement to spice up the proceedings.

An interactive element of the concert got the audience to know the players a little better, who used their flutes to answer simple questions like “do you have a favourite flute?” or “what do you think of pineapples on pizzas?” Higher pitched and more florid responses indicated affirmation while lower pitched and falling tones meant “duh”.

SEA Medley sounded distinctly non-Indian because Gu Wei’s arrangement included melodies from Myanmar, Thailand and Singapore. The last was also the most recognisable, not Dick Lee’s Home but Dayong Sampan, celebrated by Leong Yoon Pin and the Chinese song Tian Mi Mi.

Vidwan’s Ragam Tanam Pallavi was the longest work on the programme, first sounding long-breathed and meditative as it evoked wind on the mountains, and later many spots involving improvisation. Carnatic violinist Sreeranjani got the lion’s share, and was justly applauded. The increasingly irregular meters were met with players clapping out rhythms as the music veered to near-intoxication.

After a short break, Pandit Ashwin Sreenivasan’s Panch Prayag resumed the choir-like harmonies from the flutes before breaking out into a raucous dance. In a similar vein, Niranjan’s fast and rhythmic Feathers of Grace evoked the regal strut of a peacock, with hundreds of flickering eyes following suit. Finally, Vidwan’s Thillana In Raga Pantuvarali saw the violin echoing the lowest pitched flute in dialogue, as the music wound its way to a celebratory close.

With such committed advocacy from Vamshika, the complexion of Indian flute playing in Singapore would never be the same again.

Mentor Vidwan Amith Nadig
receives his applause.

SINGAPORE COMPOSERS FESTIVAL: FINAL CONCERT / VENU NADAM: A SYMPHONIC CONFLUENCE / Composers Society of Singapore / Vamshika Quintet

 

SINGAPORE COMPOSERS FESTIVAL: 

FINAL CONCERT 

Peranakan Museum 

Saturday (23 March 2024)

VENU NADAM: 

A SYMPHONIC CONFLUENCE 

Vamshika Quintet & Friends 

Black Box, Drama Centre 

Saturday (23 March 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 March 2024 with the title "Contemporary dissonance at Singapore Composers Festival, Vamshika Quintet's aural feast".  

The Singapore Composers Festival was a one-day event organised by the Composers Society of Singapore (CSS) which included two talks and and two concerts. Its closing concert was a showcase by six young composers from CSS and its cross-Causeway counterpart, the Malaysian Composers Collective (MCC). 

Interesting and thought-provoking may describe the works performed by the aptly-named Weird Aftertaste, a contemporary music ensemble comprising keyboardists Bertram Wee and Lynette Yeo, saxophonist Michellina Chan, violinist Christoven Tan and cellist Chee Jun Sian. 

Music from the guests came first, opening with Sebastian Ooi’s Mujo for alto saxophone, which explored myriad capabilities of the instrument. Lyrical lines were interjected with assorted snorts and gasps, and clicks emanating from depressed keys, a representation of the state of impermanence suggested in its title in Japanese. 

Ainolnaim Azizol’s Miroirs of Malay Rebab: Menghadap Rebab highlighted the modern cello’s kinship with the Malay spiked fiddle, with accompanying electronics sampling recorded sounds of techniques employed including pizzicatos, slides and the knocking of wood. 

Spare a thought for those sitting near the speakers as Jellal Koay’s oMGgggG hOW dAR3 yoOouUwUu!!!!!1! for keyboard four hands blasted without apology the musical equivalent of Greta Thunberg-inspired expletives. Listen beyond the ear-shattering white noise, one may find a modicum of rhythm and demented organ-like chorales. 

From the Singaporean composers, Avik Chari’s Cities I for saxophone, cello and electronics provided the most repeatable listening, its funky jazz-like themes and rhythms suggesting the chic of urban sophisticates. 14-year-old composing prodigy Nathanael Koh’s Of Eternal Time for synthesisers, violin and cello relived the reassuring chords of Frenchman Olivier Messiaen and a quest for inner peace. 

Closing the hour-long concert was Ding Jian Han’s P. p. P. p., a play of contrasting sound textures and rhythms featuring all five players. With motivic fragments, pulsed ostinatos, alternating long-held and staccatos notes coming into the mix, the pointillistic score brought the festival to a resounding conclusion. To the creators, one can only heed, “Carry on composing!” 

There are few things in this world more haunting or sensuous as the tones of the bansuri or Indian bamboo flute. Bring together five bansuri exponents, Niranjan Pandian, Raghavendran Rajasekaran, Logindran, Vishnu Veluri and Bian Tong who formed the Vamshika Quintet in 2022, an aural feast is the result. 

Directed by bansuri veteran Ghanavenothan Retnam, the ensemble does not function like a typical Western ensemble with polyphony as a main goal. Instead, each player takes turns as his own virtuoso with others providing heterophonic backing and harmonies in fixed intervals. In addition, the quintet was accompanied by Lazar T. Sebastine (Carnatic violin) and percussion, Jayagowtham Annadurai (mridangam) and Lalit Kumar Ganesh (tabla). 

The music was based on ragas, the quintessential framework and basis for Indian composition and improvisation. Titles like Pandian’s Divine Echoes and Ballad of Quintessence, Muthuswami Dikshithar’s Vathapi Ganapathim, and visiting composer-lecturer Vidwan Amith Nadig’s Leaf merely served as vehicles for musical magic – a free-flowing and almost improvisatory outpouring of expressions and emotions - to emerge. 

In Nadig’s Ragam Thanam Pallavi, the concert’s centrepiece and longest work, guest-performer Samuel Phua’s mellow saxophone blended seamlessly into the ensemble. The music’s complex and ever-changing meters were comfortably negotiated, and there was even a segment of communal beating out of rhythms with no winds being heard. 

Nadig’s Nuances saw Jonathan Tan’s dizi (Chinese bamboo flute) join the love-in. Far from being an interloper, his higher pitched and shriller timbre were absorbed as an integral part of the flute family. Adjectives like mesmerising, hypnotising and other-worldly came to mind all through the concert’s 90-odd minutes, performed without intermission. 

In Lalgudi Jayaraman’s classic Mohanakalyani Thillana, the pristine tone of Rachel Ho’s Western flute in perfect conversation with any of the bansuris became true objects of beauty. One might add a glimpse of paradise itself.

Visiting bansuri specialist Vidwan Amith Nadig
addressing the audience and performers.