Some evenings stay with you long after the last note. Saturday, September 26, 2026 was one of them. I had the joy of performing at the 31st Sangeet Sankalp Saptah, organized by Saptak School of Music (Estd. 1980), at Lions Hall in Mithakhali, Ahmedabad, as part of this year's festival, which ran from 25 September to 4 October. The hall was packed, and I'm still carrying the warmth of that audience with me.
Saptak kindly shared these photographs from the evening, so here is the concert as it unfolded, with Riddhish Vora on tabla beside me.
Raga Yamani
I opened with Raga Yamani, a raga composed by the great Ustad Vilayat Khan himself. Playing his creation on a stage like this always feels like an act of gratitude. (I wrote more about the raga's story in my earlier post from this concert.)
If you're new to Hindustani classical music, here's the journey the raga took that night:
Alap: a slow, unmetered opening with no tabla. Phrase by phrase, the raga reveals its notes and its mood.
Jod: a gentle, steady pulse enters, and the melody starts to move and gather momentum, still without tabla.
Vilambit gat: the tabla joins for a slow composition in Teentaal, a rhythmic cycle of 16 beats. The gat is a fixed melody we keep returning to, with improvisation woven around it, and sitar and tabla meeting again on sam, the first beat of the cycle.
Drut gat: a second composition, also in Teentaal, at a much faster tempo. This is where the conversation with the tabla really sparkles.
Jhala: the finale. Rapid strokes on the drone strings, interlaced with the melody, build the raga to its climax.
A Dhun in Mishra Maand
To close, I played a short dhun, a light, song-like piece, in Mishra Maand. Maand has its roots in the folk music of Rajasthan, and mishra means "mixed," which allows a little freedom to bring in notes from outside the raga. After the depth of Yamani, it was a sweet way to end the evening.
Watch & Listen
The Raga Yamani clips are already out: watch them in Live at Saptak — An Evening of Raga Yamani in Ahmedabad and on my YouTube channel, @sitar_bug. The full-length concert video is coming in the next few weeks, so subscribe and you won't miss it.
Thank You
My heartfelt thanks to Saptak School of Music for the invitation and for these photographs, to Riddhish Vora for his wonderful tabla, and to everyone who filled the hall that evening.
Photos courtesy of Saptak School of Music.