Music and Fests

There's nothing I love more than music. And there's nothing in music I love more than performing on stage and that's exactly what I got to do today at Kala Mandir.
The band for CQ had asked me to sing for them, and I jumped at the chance. Although comprised mainly of class 12s, I had no problems fitting into their band. That's probably because I already knew Sumanas, Kunal, Aditya Bhattacharya, Aditya Sharma, Ramkamal and Kaustabh quite well. I got to know Raktim a little better during practice, which there was hardly any of, by the way.
The songs we were doing were Nothing Else Matters with one verse of Shaan's Le Chale in between for the medley, and John Denver's Leaving On A Jet Plane for my solo. I have this bad habit of appearing to be giving it to the mike stand when lost in the music, but somehow I did get that under control for my stage performance. Although the medley did screw up, when I met people after our performance, they told me that though the medley wasn't good, Leaving On A Jet Plane rocked. For that, I was satisfied with my performance - if a St. James guy said so, I have to believe him.
Our class 11 team once again rocked Impact. Saurav Mehta, Rohan Shah, Yash Kandoi, Akshay Doshi, Rachit Mehta, Ronak Mehta, Naman Saraiya, Hamza Khan, Harsh Sethia, Priyam Chaudhuri, Preet Tyagi and myself were the members of this victorious Impact team for CQ. This makes it 4 Impact wins in a row - Verizmo, Dhrishtikon, Momentum and Chiaros Quro. I hope that this LMB Impact team continues it's unbeaten run at the "Big Three" of 2007 - Callisto, Syzygy and Karma Yatra.
Our biggest satisfaction was that we beat St James, our biggest rivals. St James and LMB don't often compete at fests, and when we do encounter each other, it becomes an enthralling competition. This competition exists because LMB, St James and St Xavier's are the best of the school circuit, and therefore we have to feed on this rivalry to become the very best.

The Chalk Circle

The students who recently performed in Theatrecian's production of "The Chalk Circle" definitely benefited from the presence of British theatre personality James Williams. He adapted & directed the work of playwright Bertolt Brecht for us, and remarkably managed to put together the play in just 4 days.
After conducting workshops on improvisation, James started us off with the scripts. At first, it might have seemed doubtful that this play could be managed in the limited time we had. However, the enthusiasm of our director soon rubbed off on us, and the rehearsals were lively and productive.
It was a great experience for everyone involved. Students of Apeejay, Assembly of God Church, Cambridge, La Martiniere for Boys and Pratt Memorial worked together on this play. The students made new friends and interacted with each other, something not always possible during inter-school competitions.
One interesting thing about the production was that there was no fixed actress playing the protagonist Grusha. Almost all the actresses involved with this play at some time played the role. Utsav Kothari of LMB played 4 roles with elan, an incredible feat. Prapti Walia of Cambridge and Neha Dubey of Apeejay did excellent portrayals of Grusha. Saurav Mehta of LMB stole the show with his hilarious depiction of judge Azdak. The music of Samuel and Rahul of AG on keyboards & guitar also deserve mention.
Once again, all thanks to James, without whom this wouldn't have been possible.

Rockstar : Supernova

I have been watching Rockstar : Supernova ever since the show began, but I'm now beginning to doubt if I'll watch the show again.
This week when Ryan Star was eliminated, I was pissed off, to say the least. As a person who loves music, I was sure Ryan would become the lead singer of Supernova. The dude has tremendous talent, and his performance of Losing My Religion by REM on the show was by far the best I have ever seen of the song. But, two days ago, Supernova decided to eliminate Ryan Star.
The band had themselves said that Ryan had gotten a great audience response, and made it quite clear that Dilana had the worst performance among the bottom three. Yet, I fail to understand why they decided to throw Ryan out despite his performance in the elimination? If the elimination is going to be decided by previous performances, why have an elimination show in the first place? The fact remains that Dilana only survived because Supernova were partial towards her.
For me, the show has been reduced to a farce. There's simply no point in watching it anymore.