Ravi Shankar in Toronto

Last night I went to a beautiful concert with my parents as a 23rd birthday gift. Ravi Shankar with his daughter Anouksha Shankar at the Royal Conservatory of Music. The Concert was sold out (no surprise there). This concert was also part of the grand opening of the Royal Conservatory's expansion. It was cleverly expanded on the actual side of a building so that the original building was inside of the newer building, most likely to preserve it. I thought the walkway to the hall was neat too because there were artifacts dating back to about 200 BC displayed in glass cases. One was a tuning box of a cello with a scroll shaped like a lions head, another was a tiny flute made of wood from the Medieval times, there were beautiful figurines of Han Dynasty Musicians made of some type of clay.

The setup of the Shankar Concert was like no other concert I've been to. Each musician was of course barefoot seated upon a large box. Each seat had a glowing red, yellow, orange indian carpet laying flat. The carpet glowed even more in the spotlight. Anouksha was out first with the other musicians (correct me if I'm wrong), Two Tanburists [Tambura], One Tablist [Tabala], and a wooden flute player (if you listen to Ravi Shankar's music you'd know what this sounds like) <3 (,:

There's nothing else to say about the music other than HYPNOTIC. Especially when later they had sandalwood incense burning. It really seemed to connect everyone in a way. First thing Ravi said when he sat down, his water and Sitar given to him was, "Welcome to Montreal!"
We were in Toronto.

In Ravi's Part of the concert, they switched the wooden flute player to a Pakhawaj player and had a DRUMMING BATTLE between him and the Tablist. It was pretty wicked. Anouksha was hitting only four notes on her sitar while the two drummers were battling with speed and laughing.

I'm glad I had a chance to see the two Shankars in concert, Ravi is 89 now and he's still playing the Sitar like he always has. I don't think this will ever happen again in my life, so I'm super thankful for going!! Best Birthday gift EVAR!