NEW YORK: New York-based RagaChitra Foundation presented a unique event featuring an innovative music concert and the release of a Bharathanatyam DVD on Oct 6. The classical music concert, titled "Ranjani Mala", was a melodious recital of exotic Carnatic compositions in various Ranjani ragas.

For the first time in the country, a Carnatic concert was presented by a choir of six singers who skilfully accompanied the lead singers Nivedita ShivRaj and Samyuktha ShivRaj with rhythmic swaras and outstanding melodies.

The instrumental music for the entire concert was exclusively produced in tracks with a wide spectrum of instruments such as the grand piano, saxophone, veena, sitar, flute, strings and reverberating rhythms of drums, maracas and tambourine. In addition, the music also included South Indian percussions - the mridangam, ghatam, tavil, chende, kanjira and morsing.

"This is a novel project to take the traditional Indian music to the modern generation and to the world audience," says Nivedita ShivRaj who leads the project at RagaChitra Foundation. "With a rich treasure of ragas and compositions, Carnatic music has plenty to offer to music-lovers.

We believe that a contemporary style of Carnatic music will attract all audiences just like other genre like reggae and Celtic music. Ranjani Mala presents Carnatic songs with a perfect blend of melody, chorus and rhythms."

Vivian Warfield, the Arts Fund Director of the Queens Council on the Arts, who was the Chief Guest of the evening commended the initiative of the foundation and the leadership of Nivedita ShivRaj in promoting the ethnic arts in the US and expressed the support of the arts council for such projects.

A new Bharathanatyam DVD titled "Bharathanatyam Surrealistic Bliss" was released during the event on Saturday. The DVD featured Bharathanatyam dancers Kavitha Muthukumaren and Bhargavi Gopalan and was produced by Harini Cultural Center of Connecticut.

The DVD presents the Margam style of repertoire Pushpanjali, Varnam, Padam and Thillana. The production, with subtitles in English, helps dance students to get closer to the Arangetram by illustrating professional dance techniques and postures. Kavitha Muthukumaren highlighted various portions of the production and explained how dance students will benefit by the video.

Warfield released the DVD and accepted the first copy from Kavitha Muthukumaren who is a performing artist, instructor and choreographer. She the Artistic Director of Harini Cultural Center of Dance and runs a Bharathanatyam School in Connecticut.

RagaChitra Foundation is poised to broadcast an exclusive television show "RagaChitram" featuring Indian classical music and dance. The program will be the first-of-its-kind in the USA and will be on air from January 2008.