Digital musical offering of peace and friendship today

The South Asian Symphony Foundation will be hosting a digital concert premiere on July 20, at 8 pm, on its YouTube channel to celebrate its third anniversary.

Titled 'The Spirit of South Asia', the concert is a musical offering of peace and friendship from individual musicians of the orchestra.

Nirupama Rao, founder-trustee, The South Asian Symphony Foundation, says it is not an orchestral performance but performances by individual musicians. She says the pandemic made it impossible for musicians to meet, but there have been dialogues digitally on forming an identity in South Asia through music and this has kept the process going.

The last three years of the Foundation have been eventful, says Rao. She recalls that the beginning was no easy task because they had to build a database of South Asian musicians who could play in an orchestra.

"This was not easy because the tradition of symphony orchestras in our region has been extremely rare. We had to go to various countries and establish contact with musicologists in South Asian countries to understand who we could include in this database. We also decided to expand the reach to include musicians from the diaspora of persons of Indian origin and South Asian origin because in these countries we found a treasure trove of very talented musicians from South Asia or South Asian origin who were accustomed to playing symphony orchestras and who were extremely well trained and talented," Rao recalls.

Apart from holding regular concerts in Mumbai and Bengaluru, the Foundation has also started a magazine called Accord.