Ilaiyaraja's New Albums 2016-18, News and Titbits

[rajsekar]

Today Maestro Ilayaraaja will receive the prestigious Padma Vibushan award from the President of India. It was so heartening to see Maestro performing in San Jose, California just yesterday March 18 (USA Pacific time). Maestro's USA tour started the week before (March 10) in Houston which was followed by Dallas, Texas. The Budapest Symphony Orchestra from Hungary is accompanying Raaja in this USA tour. On Saturday, March 17, he performed a full Telugu concert in San Francisco Bay Area (San Jose) followed by a Tamil concert the next day (March 18). It was an amazing concert and watching the Budapest Symphony folks was awesome. Raaja had to leave the concert towards the end to take a special chartered flight to New Delhi from San Francisco. Today he will be receiving the Padma Vibushan award in Rashtrapati Bhavan and probably fly back to USA (Chicago) to continue the remaining part of the tour. I wish Raaja performed a dedicated BGM concert with the Hungary Symphony group. I was expecting the Raaja Parvai BGM to be played in this trip though they played the song from the movie.

Having been to Raaja's international concerts during the past few years, I can always return back with a sense of 200% fulfillment. Rahul Nambiar rocked with his performance and so was Vibhavari Apte. She was literally amazing with her rendering of S Janaki's platinum hits. KS Chitra and Mano were the peak performers. Super Singer 2014 participants (Sharath and Niranjana) performed in Chorus and duet songs. There were few other Super Singers in the group.