Church of the Trinity, Fri 22 Feb

The santoor has 100 strings. It is played with hammers and is a form of dulcimer. Dulcimers in various forms are found in many cultures, but the home of the santoor is Kashmir, in the northwestern corner of the subcontinent. It is often featured in the traditional or classical music of the region.

This concert featured Vinai Desai, a young santoor master from the USA, and tabla maestro, Jay Dabgar, from Melbourne.

Subcontinental classical music pieces are generally long (no three minute pop songs here) and meditative. The opening piece was played solo by Desai. It begins with what felt like an exploration of all the various notes available in the relevant key. It involved both hammering and a sliding technique of dragging the hammer across the strings; a kind of bowing in effect. As it evolves you start to hear a drone effect as one sound lingers underneath the notes to follow. So begins the meditative aspect in earnest. Something akin to a melody with an implicit rhythm begins to take shape, and this internal pulse gets faster and faster until drone, rhythm and melody blur into a joyous wall of sound.

Desai is joined on tabla for the second extended piece, and we are reminded that what follows will be largely improvised. The piece is never the same twice. But there are structures the musicians work within and these can be difficult to discern for the Western ear. Tabla and santoor take turns leading the improvisation in the early part of the piece. I can feel my Western musical sensibilities wanting the music to take a particular path but it continually refuses! I need to surrender just as the two musicians do once they have reached collaborative harmony and exhibit extraordinary control of rhythm and melody – at times at breakneck speed. They’re flying and so is the audience.

I don’t know how they decide, or feel, how to end, but somehow they do manage to know exactly how to end together, and it’s suddenly finished. The spell is over and we all spontaneously applaud.

A remarkable display of virtuosic skills and, as Desai suggested in his introduction, how music can find your body and mind. Or does your body and mind find the music? I don’t think it actually matters, as long as it happens!