Fresno Philharmonic preview: Tabla master Sandeep Das relishes the chance to share his instrument with audiences
By Donald Munro
You don’t know the tabla? You will if you attend the final concerts in the Fresno Philharmonic’s 2024-25 season. This deceptively simple looking instrument – a set of small hand drums attached together – is the lifelong domain of guest artist Sandeep Das, a Grammy Award-winning musician and Guggenheim Fellow considered one of the world’s great tabla masters.
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“You will have an experience that you have never had before,” Das told me on Friday just a few hours before a rehearsal for the concerts, which will be held at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 12, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 13, at the Shaghoian Concert Hall. (The orchestra also will perform Debussy “Clair de lune” and the Brahms Symphony No. 1.)
Here are Five Things to Know about the concert and this remarkable performer:
1.
Das will be performing Dinuk Wijeratne’s Tabla Concerto, composed in 2011. In his original program notes, Wijeratne wrote that the tabla has achieved global popularity for “the richness of its timbre, and for the virtuosity of a rhythmically complex repertoire that cannot be separated from the instrument itself.”
Building on this background, the composer offers up a swirl of genres that ranges from Baroque canon and “Drum-&-Bass” electronic music to Indian folk-song and a looping melody outlining the time cycle known as a “nagma,” with the soloist given a superstar moment of rhythmic complexity.
2.
Fans of the concerto structure know that soloists are often given an opportunity to offer a cadenza, an often improvised and highly ornamented musical passage. Wijeratne’s piece offers a “cadenza-esque” moment, Das says – one that gives him great liberty as a musician, but also the discipline of certain restraints, such as lining up properly with the bass line, say.
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“Though he has written specific notes, he has given me the freedom to take those notes and make them fly,” he says.
The result is that you could attend both Saturday and Sunday’s concerts and hear distinct differences in Das’ interpretations of the piece.
3.
Next comes a topic related to Das that I am guessing not one reader speeding along this article could guess would come next:
Golf.
Das loves golf, and, in fact, has just finished up a round of it in Fresno just before talking to me on the phone. Hitting the greens is a perfect thing to do before going to a rehearsal, he says. For him, golf has a lot to teach a musician.
“Unless you play golf, you will never play music well,” he says jokingly. “It keeps you humble. You hit one great shot, and then 10 bad shots.”
4.
Though he has performed the Wijeratne piece more than 100 times, Das relishes each new opportunity. At these concerts, he’s looking forward to performing again with Rei Hotoda, the Fresno Philharmonic’s music director, upon whom he lavishes praise.
“This will be my third time playing with Rei under her baton. I consider her one of the best conductors in the world. She understands rhythms and she understands this piece.”
He also lauds his guru, or teacher, the acclaimed Kishan Maharaj of Benares, India. Das studied – and lived – with Maharaj for 12 years, fulfilling an apprenticeship that seemed to involve as much time working in the master’s garden as playing the tabla. But the intensity of the experience paid off as Maharaj taught that humility for a musician can be as important as prowess.
Das started performing professionally in 1990. He says it took Maharaj 10 years of attending his former student’s concerts to finally smile, nod his head and say, “Not bad.”
5.
For a final question, I tell Das that I’ve opted for something offbeat. When he dreams, does he play the tabla? Does rhythm work its way into his nocturnal journeys?
He laughs heartily. Rhythm is always a part of him, he says. He’ll be watching a sporting event and realize that his toes are moving to a precise beat.
Sometimes he dreams the dreaded anxiety dream – in this case he’s giving a concert and performing horribly, and then he looks at the audience and sees (you guessed it) his guru in the audience with a grimace on his face.
And then, other times, his dreams are just about sheer freedom.
“My wife has told me many times, and my two girls tell me, ‘Why do you play on your tummy?’ “
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