Dear friends, It was a lovely day, a little rain, sunshine, and single digit temperatures at Melbourne, Australia. My Isai Payanam concert started at 4:30 pm at the Performing Arts Centre, Rowville. The hall is a beauty, with fine sound, good acoustic design and panelling. The hall was filled to its capacity of 500, and there were standees too. This was a fund raiser for the Vakrathunda Vinayagar Temple, Basin. Responsive, alert audience they were, with a huge appetite for music. Several ragas were lapped up, Classical pieces, devotionals, film songs etc. were sung by me, and I was enjoying myself too. Accompanying me on stage were Nagaraj Iyer on the Violin, and Yogaraja Kandasamy, a leading mridangist in Australia, and a very talented young keyboardist, and morsing player, as well as Kannan on the tabla. The Indian Arts Association had arranged me a series of radio and TV interviews, promos, and had printed lovely brochures indicating program sequence, profiles of artistes etc. taste...
