Grammy Award-winners Ustad Zakir Hussain and Rakesh Chaurasia join Taufiq Qureshi, Sangeet Haldipur and Vijay Prakash for a concert that showcases their talent of improvisation and skill
Ustad Zakir Hussain and Rakesh Chaurasia at a performance
Musicians on stage are no different to footballers improvising on the ground. Rakesh Chaurasia is more than familiar with it. The nephew of the legendary flautist Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia is a multiple Grammy award-winner, and chuckles when we ask how musicians make those shifts. “Ours is a constant effort to get on the same page with our fellow musicians on stage,” he shares. This challenge is only multiplied when the said musicians are improvisers like Ustad Zakir Hussain and Taufiq Qureshi.
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Tomorrow, Chaurasia will join the duo, along with vocalist Vijay Prakash and keyboardist-composer Sangeet Haldipur in a rare concert that will test all their improvisational skills. “The idea of the collaboration started with a conversation last year. We decided to have the first concert in Chinchwad back in February. Zakirbhai himself is an amazing curator, and knows how to present an ensemble, and bring it together. He has an innate understanding of how a unit should sound,” Chaurasia shares.
Taufiq Qureshi. File Pic (right) Sangeet Haldipur
The music, the flautist adds, will cross a genre from classical to semi-classical and fusion. “It is suitable for the audience in a city like Mumbai where every listener will enjoy it,” he says. Incidentally, the group has not rehearsed yet. With Ustad Zakir Hussain still to fly down from the United States, practice has been limited to sharing pieces on a WhatsApp group. But all of them are familiar with each other’s style.
Taufiq Qureshi shares, “We have performed with each other for so many years. Vijay [Prakash] and I have been performing for several years in India and overseas, the same with Rakeshji and Sangeet [Haldipur]. So, it is not like we need multiple rehearsals to get in rhythm.” However, this is only the second time that the group will be on stage, after the Pune performance.
Although some of the pieces are defined, and familiar combinations, a majority is improvisation. “Our music is 75 per cent improvisation. It cannot be rehearsed. We simply jam to tighten the set,” says Qureshi. Chaurasia notes, “This interaction is at the root of classical music. People underestimate how much we communicate through simple eye contact. That is what makes the experience unique.”
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Few enjoy this mischief of changing rhythms like Ustad Zakir Hussain. Chaurasia recently returned from a series of performances in London with Hussain and Louiz Banks, and shares, “That was a completely different combination. For instance, I have played with Louiz uncle [Banks]. I know his pieces, and I know what he will add and where. But when you throw in the combination of Zakir bhai and Shankar Mahadevanji improvising on these pieces, it becomes a different ball game. The game might change, but the pitch remains the same. You have to stay on your toes as a musician, and as an audience,” he laughs.
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