Rehersal Continued...

ARR started singing Aazadi from Bose. It was wonderful! During the first rehersal of this song, the chorus was not perfect... They lost their shruthi and gradually their pitch reduced!!!! ARR did not interrupt them... But, once the choir was over, ARR raised the volume of his keyboard, and played an abaswaram - indicating the dropping shruthi and making fun of the singers.... Everyone, including the harmony singers enjoyed ARR's sense of humour!

ARR also made Sukhwinder and Sadhna Sargam work really hard for Aayo Re, the song from the yet-unreleased movie Water. Some parts of this song were practiced quite a number of times. This was understandable as this must have been probably the first or second time, they were singing this song, after the recording!!!

All through the rehersal, we kept applauding each and every movement of ARR on stage. We were holding out a big banner showing ARRAHMANFANS.COM. ARR knew we were there and he was acknowledging our applause now and then, by waving at us.. This got us even more excited!!!!

Blaaze
There was a small break during the reharsal and we met Blaaze during this time... He was delighted to meet us when we told him that we are from ARRAHMANFANS.COM. He apparently is also a member of the group (with a anonymous id, of course) and has been following the discussions on the group. We were astonished when he identified us by our mail-ids and also talked about some of the discussions going on in the group! He spoke to ARR and arranged for a private meeting with ARR for us. This was when we took photos with ARR, about which I have already written in my earlier post.

The Montage
During the meeting, we presented ARR with a montage - it contained the images of CD/Cassette covers of each and every ablum that ARR had composed till now! Kudos to Gopal Srinivasan for scanning all those 93 CD covers and compiling them!

Sadhna Sargam
I met Sadhna ji during lunch on the day of the concert. Spoke to her for a few minutes, first congratulating her on her wonderful performance during the rehersals. I quizzed whether she had learnt Thamizh ('coz her pronunciation in Thee Thee was perfect - and she was singing without looking at the lyrics). Her reply - "no" - with a beautiful smile! She sadi that she just listens to what ARR says - just remembers them and works on it so that she got right! And of course, ARR would correct her if there is a mistake. She told me that she would be really careful not to make the mistake again!

Later that afternoon, I spent some time with bass guitarist Keith Peters and the male harmony singers (Mayiliragae fame Naresh Iyer was one of them). Then of course, the concert happened in the evening.

Thus, had a great experience on the two days. A big thanks to Gopal Srinivasan (moderator, ARRAHMANFANS), Arun KB Ganesh and all others who made all this possible. Also, thanx to Mugilan and RadhaKrishnan for the fotos - some of the fotos were from their cams as there were restrictions on the use of cams and we restricted to only 2-3 cams!

The End