PARVEZ Shahid
Kushal

Fy 8102


Dunya Records
India

 

Felmay are proud to present Kushal, a new CD by renowned Indian sitarist Ustad SHAHID PARVEZ. This live recording was made at a concert given in 2004 as part of Turin’s Gong festival and it’s certainly live that one can best appreciate the many nuanced art of SHAHID PARVEZ, an instrumentalist of the very top drawer who has already released a previous CD on (Magnificent Melody, fy 8086). The raga featured on Kushal is called Shyam Kalyan which according to its classification should be played at dusk. SHAHID PARVEZ tackles it with the maturity of a great artist, showing an ability to inject each new performance with the sense of warmth, dignity and grace without which music means very little. Right from the opening notes the listener cannot help but be captivated and absorbed into the musician’s world, a realm of thrilling vibrations and exquisite timbres through which one is suddenly transported from an atmosphere of meditative calm to one of great animation and creative excitement. In the first part of the raga which steadily unfolds in a relatively slow, reflective tempo SHAHID PARVEZ ‘s style is limpid and flowing, full of the subtle melodic contrasts and variations one expects from the best Indian classical music. The second half, in contrast, builds to a virtuosic crescendo, gradually shifting the initial slow tempo up to a powerful rhythmic frenzy. PARVEZ’s consistently graceful playing is ably supported by the tabla of Sanka Chatterjee, the two artists engaging in a musical dialogue of dazzling complexity and fecundity. With this live set SHAHID PARVEZ confirms once again his position as one of the greatest Indian classical instrumentalists, taking his rightful place among a noble family of musicians (he is the nephew of the celebrated Vilayat Khan, 1924-2004) after having honed his extraordinary talent through rigorous discipline and hard study. Following in the path of the gharana masters of Etawah, a prestigious school founded in the early 19th century, Parvez has assimilated their teachings (centred around the transposition of gaayaki vocal style), forging his own uniquely personal style and sound and becoming himself a model for younger musicians.