Yo-Yo Ma at the Royal Albert Hall

Well, few experiences in life make you feel like life is nearly perfect.

For me, listening to Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Route Ensemble , at the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) was one them.

First the venue.
If you click on the link ( on 'seating information' under the 'visitor's information') and pass your mouse over H2 J1 in the seating plan- that's where we sat and as you can see,the stage was not far away. Also notice the hall itself. It reminded me of the many movies I have seen where there is an opera / play ( remember the 'Dil Chahta Hai' where Amir Khan and Priety Zinta watch an opera?).
These memories were always associated with expressions like, 'wow! look at the stage yaar!'.....or....'wow! just see how grand the whole thing looks with all the red velvet drapes blah...blah...'
Yesterday ,it actually happened to me.
I was speechless for awhile when I entered the hall. It was simply amazing. Then, along with 'wow' , I was muttering other four letter words which cannot be mentioned in the blog! Reason- all the neural wiring in my brained went haywire for awhile and only few words were came to mind!! Even the roof of the hall had something called 'acoustic mushrooms' suspended. The boxes ( where, obviously, those able to afford tickets at a higher range sat ) were indeed having the same red/maroon velvet drapes outside them.Looked too good. The effect of these colours and gold /cream pillars and,and.,and.......I swear to God - I would do anything to have a better vocabulary than this to explain what I am trying to say :-) Basically,what I am saying is that it looked regal.
The hall is supposed to hold over 5000 people and my guess is that there were atleast 4000 there in the hall.

The music itself was very different from anything I had heard ever in my life. Music was from Mongolia, China,India,Armenia and Iran. Yo-Yo Ma (he informed the audience that Ma in chinese meant horse) was gracious and introduced all the performers. His cello was part of all compositions - that he has been able to integrate the sounds of the cello with the various sounds from instruments such as the pipa and sheng from China, tabla from India and the kemanche (Iranian spike fiddle) from Iran, speaks of both his creativity and laterality in thinking. The camaraderie among the artists was apparent and the crowd got involved too.

Sandeep Das on the tabla made our August 15th celebartions of Independence day complete.

Oh yes, the performance was part of the BBC Proms,2004 and this was Prom number 40.