Second fiddle to none

Young violinist Apoorva Krishna’s fusion experiments are gaining her much appreciation.

It is less than two years since classical violinist Apoorva Krishna’s composition ‘Ragamaya’ was sung by Shankar Mahadevan and released on YouTube. The video song, which treads on multiple shrutis in four musical scales and stretches to three octaves, had Shankar commenting that this kind of Grahabeda treat, or the changing shruti (pitch) patterns, is a brain-teaser to the composer and a musical challenge for singers. “It’s a contemporary presentation of a time-honoured musical form,” Shankar had expressed when Apoorva played alongside on her violin.

Bangalore-based Apoorva, 23, who holds a degree in Business Administration, has not looked back since. Her composing skills follow her violin-playing abilities like a shadow; helping her expand her talents to cover classical, fusion and collaborative exercises. Although trained in playing pure Carnatic melodies, Apoorva’s curious mind stepped onto other platforms after her bagging the Berklee College of Music scholarship that exposed her to Bulgarian music, rock and funk-fusion, which she has often been presenting to appreciative audiences.

Apoorva released an Indo-Western collaborative, ‘Merging Parallels’, last month. The less-than four minutes melody encompasses 18 ragas, supported by magical chord changes. It aesthetically abides by the Tillana patterns with mathematical jathi prayogas as well as a lyrical section in Sanskrit, based on Raga Saramathi. ‘Merging Parallels’, led by Apoorva, has Varijashree Venugopal on vocals, Bruno Raberg on the double bass, Aleif Hamdan on the guitar and Sunaad Anoor on the khanjira.

The beginnings

Apoorva started learning the violin as a five-year-old in California where her parents, Murali Krishna and Arathi, stayed earlier. She trained under the Lalgudi family legends Brahmanandam and Anuradha Sridhar where the strict syllabus exposed her to vocalised formatting. Composing too was intrinsic to Lalgudi schooling, as part of their ‘creative lab sessions.’ Her teenage years saw her reach many a classical platform alongside the who’s who of Carnatic music and 2018 saw her bagging 21 concerts at the Chennai music season, where she accompanied Aruna Sairam and Chitraveena Ravikiran, amongst others.

Apoorva was the first Indian to bag the Tarisio International scholarship for 2017-18 for ‘Bahudari’, a video single she created with percussionists Vinod Shyam and Sunaad Anoor.

Earlier, she had composed a tillana in Raga Ranjani (released by IndianRaga) that gave her a stronger footing with 30,000 hits in a single week. This was enough encouragement for her to compose an album of tillanas in 2018 that was presented by eight young musicians from Bengaluru and released on a mobile app. “Tillana has both lyrics and musical syllables to punctuate the rhythm and this musical form has been the signature of the Lalgudi school,” says Apoorva, whose passion for tillanas has kept her grand-guru Lalgudi Jayaraman’s legacy going too.

Speaking on how ‘Merging Parallels’ took shape, Apoorva on phone from New Jersey, looks back at events that magnetically pulled her towards composing the melody. “In November 2019, I was called on stage by legends John McLaughlin, the guitarist and tabla maestro Zakir Hussain to perform the famous Shakti masterpiece ‘Lotus Feet’ at the Harvard Business School, at a concert organised by Berklee India Exchange. Since then, Mr John has been inspiring and broadening my horizons, urging me to take a collaborative approach between eastern and western styles,” says Apoorva.

“I have been fascinated by the concept of chords and Western harmonies. I always wished to fuse my roots in traditional Indian classical with contemporary Western,” explains Apoorva, who then began exploring if by drawing parallels she could possibly compose a Carnatic traditional tillana over multiple keys and modes, simultaneously, just like any other song over chord changes. “That’s how ‘Merging Parallels’ came to life.”

How challenging was it for an Indian classical violinist to have a fast-paced piece snugly running on different ragas, gliding over different shrutis for ‘Merging Parallels’? “Carnatic music is performed on one key, but many modes. However, Western music introduces another dimension through chord changes and harmonies. Finding a common ground to get the best of both worlds is always a challenge in collaborative efforts,” says Apoorva, who is all set to launch a new series with influences from genres as varied as flamenco, latin jazz, western classical, Polish jazz, electronic, bluegrass, Iranian and Hip-Hop.