it was a mlange of soulful music as eight classical artistes from across the country came together to create magic for the 8th season of monsoon nirvana a concert held at shilpakala vedika recently titled aadianant the event fetured singers gayatri ashokan and harish sivaramakrishnan along with sitar maestro purbayan chatterjee tabalist mitali vinchurkar flautist tejas vinchunkar and sumana chandrasekhar on handpan and ghatam the host introduced each artiste onto the stage and the audience welcomed them with loud applauses as they walked in wearing yellowgold attires for the concert the evening commenced with sumana chandrasekhar playing the handpan which kept the audience glued to their seats this was followed by gayatri ashokans maiden rendition of an abhang a particular form of marathi devotional poetry which left the audience spellbound then sumana chandrasekhar switched from the handpan to ghatam and mesmerised the audience with her rhythmic beats on the ancient percussion instrument however the highlight of the evening was when singer harish sivaramakrishnan left the audience cheering for more after two renditions by him and with the fellow artistes also encouraging him to give in to the demand he intoned a few lines from manavyalakinchardate sitar maestro purbayan chatterjee also went off book and performed to raga malhar instead of megh raga that he had initially planned the final act turned into a breathtaking performance with all the eight artistes joining in to perform alongside purbayan and the evening came to a close with a standing ovation from the crowd as the artistes bowed back to them