that has crept into his voice and his continuing with his wellresearched changes to the concert format as recently as last week he started a concert with a fullfledged rendition of o rangasayee in kambhoji considered a weighty piece that is typically sung when the singer and the audience have settled down some continue to criticise what they dismiss as tinkering while others welcome ityet krishnas musical forays unlike his writing have not been transformative he remains a top performer a star and a crowdpuller but whats missing is creativity with a touch of madness the stamp of genius that a flute mahalingam bore made his tantrums seem trifles having not learned music formally for long mahalingam performed fewer songs but the sound that emerged from his piece of bamboo was ethereal it transported his audiences into another worldmahalingam balamurali and s balachander to name a few broke convention and created new benchmarks with their sheer genius and flight of imagination balachanders veena could pore into a musical phrase and linger there without losing audience interest the artists played for themselves and the audiences were with themin his balamurali obit krishna wrote that he did not agree with balamuralis approach and that could be because he was a stuffy carnatic musician a candid remark indeed