The Score Magazine - Archive February 2015 issue! | Page 17

Madras String Quartet Breaking Musical Boundaries V S Narasimhan and his Madras String Quartet have successfully combined two grand music systems that have been around for thousands of years. Mr. Narasimhan is here to give some background on the quartet and how they were able to accomplish this innovative feat. Can you tell us a little about MSQ and how this unique group came together? Do you perform regularly? Sure, it would be my pleasure. The Madras String Quartet was formed back in 1993. We recently had some changes in the group with Mohan Rao and Bhaskar joining our group. Its members are V R Sekar (cellist), Bhaskar (viola), R Mohan (2nd violin) and myself (VS Narasimhan – Founder and First Violinist). We are excited to have them on board and are excited for the future of our group. We are all professional musicians and we began our careers playing in the Indian film music industry. Back in the early 1960s, I had the opportunity to play chamber music (Western) with my colleagues. We would meet on Sundays to practice and eventually the group was christened Madras Chamber Orchestra and I was the leader of the group. We performed with many visiting artistes from the UK, Germany and the USA. We also took advantage of chances to participate in their master classes to build up our skills. After many years, there was what one could term a crisis in the film-industry, and this led to the unfortunate disbanding of the group. Sekar and I had become close friends and due to our passion for chamber music, we fought hard to establish a new group. We were able to add a violinist and one of our founding members Chandran switched from violin to the viola – and suddenly The Madras String Quartet was born! We have been fortunate to have great success and are humbled by the exposure we have received as a group. We have performed across India, in Europe, and in the USA as well. To date, we have four albums featuring our blend of carnatic music in our string quartet format. Who thought of the idea of playing traditional Carnatic compositions against a background of Western harmonies? I began playing as a violinist in films so I naturally became interested in the theory of Western Music. When I bought my Yamaha QY20 sequencer, I started working on various versions of Raravenu Gopala and they sounded good to me! That’s when a light went off inside my head and I got this idea of playing traditional Carnatic music compositions against a background of Western harmonies in a quartet format. Who composes the Western score for the pieces MSQ plays? How long does it take you to record an album? I had a natural curiosity in Western music since I was young. I then delved into studying elements of Western music such as harmony – so as I gained familiarity and a comfort level with such musical elements, I began arranging the Western score for the pieces that we would play and also composing my own pieces. It typically takes at least a year or more to come up with the music material to record an album. The process of arranging and composing pieces can be quite long and must be done thoughtfully. Then there is usually a 3-4 month period of practicing the album material by the quartet before final recordings. So the process is quite intense and long but our love for music pushes us forward! You have achieved critical acclaim for your work as a violinist from famous music directors in the past including Ilaiyaraja and AR Rahman. Were you inspired by any of the albums or music that you were a part of during that time? I played the solo violin parts in his albums How to Name it and Nothing But Wind and while I was certainly inspired by those previous projects, I saw a great potential for the works for The Madras String Quartet to be even more revolutionary in a sense because of the cross cultural dualistic sound that we are creating through very structured, disciplined efforts through our String Quartet format. We keep the music true to its Carnatic roots – we follow all the Indian music principles as they ought to be followed—however, we introduce a new world by bringing in Western harmonies thereby adding greater depths and new facets to Carnatic music. Its quite beautiful to hear two violins playing Carnatic passages in harmony not to mention the rare magnificence of hearing gamakas played on the Cello by Sekar. Our goal is to break musical boundaries but still remaining respectful and cognizant of what is distinctly a feature of each music system. The Score Magazine www.thescoremagazine.com 15