A musical evening

There are some well-known quotes like- ‘When words fail, music speaks.’ But the truth is that even when everything else fails, music can still speak to you. To prove and demonstrate this, Anil Srinivasan, a pianist, educator and innovator gave a talk about the magic of music called Pianos in the Playground at the MCubed Library in Bandra on Saturday, 6^th June 2015, a Mumbai Local Event organized by Junoon theatre.

Pianos in the Playground wasn’t just an ordinary talk. The peaceful and tranquil ambience of the library enhanced and intensified the magic that Anil Srinivasan created. He began by playing a snippet of Happy Birthday, something as simple as that and explained how the brain performs a task called ‘thought completion’. He also elaborated how music can be used to teach difficult subjects because it is a memory trigger. He elucidated the functions of the brain, how it accepts musical inputs, collaborates with parts of the brain like the frontal cortex and amygdala and then gives the necessary output. A simple thing like the rain clap we learnt in school can be used to teach rhythm and music. Anil Srinivasan blew everyone’s minds with his talk which not only included musical but also psychological terms. This, he said, was due to a research he had done in order to rope music in along with his studies.

Playing the piano from the age of age, he is extremely well-versed in Carnatic music, Indian classical and western music and can serenade you with his renditions of the same. He takes classical pieces and makes them his own. His description of how a tiny pause in a musical piece could symbolize a shudder of a leaf or the waves on the ocean revealed his immense love for music. He wowed us when his played some of Mozart’s variations of the well-known Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Anil Srinivasan has not hidden his musical genius under a bushel but had used it to light thousands of lives. He uses his music to educate thousands of children in South India and also as a therapeutic tool to better some lives.

His eloquence and sense of humour charmed his audience ranging from young kids to a few young-hearted senior citizens. He included short stories intermittently in his talk to appeal to his younger audience. At the end of his talk he welcomed questions and feedback and explained his whole journey from a student to an educator and how he had always carried his music along with him. He stressed on the fact that it is important to love music, interpret it yourself, make it your own and form your own conclusions. The best part of the evening was when he took requests from his audience and launched into a medley starting with the Raga Bhairavi, a few other Indian classicals, Bollywood songs like Badtameez Dil, variations of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and ended with When the Saints Go Marching In. That brought on a huge applause. Everyone left the library with a smile on their face that evening.