BIC TALKS

Musician and Museum Director Manasi Prasad joins host Pavan Srinath to talk about the life and work of Mysore T Chowdiah (1885 – 1967), violin maestro, innovator, composer and teacher of Carnatic music. Manasi also discusses the larger role of Mysore in music and performing arts over the last two centuries, and locates Chowdiah within it. She also shares Chowdiah's compositions, which have not received their due before now. Manasi spear-headed the creation of the Mysore T Chowdiah Project – www.chowdiah.com, with support from the Indian Music Experience and the Shankar Mahadevan Academy's Archive to Alive programme. The Chowdiah Project is also hosting a worldwide music competition for violinists and vocalists called Smarane, which is open for submissions till November 15, 2020. The Indian Music Experience Museum also currently crowdsourcing funding from the public. Visit their website to learn more about how you can help. Visit the Bangalore International Centre website for all the links to the archive, the music, the competition, and more. Manasi Prasad is a noted classical vocalist from Bangalore and the Museum Director of the Indian Music Experience - India's first hi-tech interactive music museum. Manasi has learnt Carnatic classical music from renowned gurus such as RK Padmanabha in Bangalore and Sriram Parasuram in Chennai. She started performing concerts at the age of 9 and since then has performed widely across India and in 6 continents around the world. Manasi is a recipient of several awards in music, including the prestigious Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar from the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Govt. of India.

Milan Vaishnav joins host Pavan Srinath to talk about the rise of Indian Americans in US politics. They discuss how Indian Americans might vote in the upcoming 2020 US Presidential Elections, political views across the community, and what issues matter most to them. Milan Vaishnav is Director and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. Milan is one of three authors of a new report on how Indian Americans are likely to vote in upcoming elections. He also hosts The Grand Tamasha Podcast. BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.

In this talk as part of 'The Satish Chandra Memorial Lecture', Romila Thapar discusses two categories of migrants, the pastoralists and the traders and will be confined to the early period of Indian history, namely up to about the fourteenth century. A fundamental difference between the two categories is that pastoral migrants tend to come to a new area, set up scattered settlements and tend to not return to their homelands. Traders tend to do the reverse since they stay in the cities where they have their trading partners. Even when they settle in the host societies there is a minimum connection between their homeland and where they have settled. The interface between the host society and the migrant settlement frequently results in elements of new cultures. These can be changed versions of a language, new social customs and new deities or forms of worship. This podcast is an extract of the longer BIC Streams event held earlier in the week. Visit BIC for more details.

Economist Ajit Ranade talks to host Pavan Srinath about the recent national legislations on farming and agricultural markets, and the reason for widespread farmer protests across the country. Ajit discusses the three amendments that were first passed as ordinances by the Government of India and explains the history and impact of Agricultural mandis (APMCs) and the Minimum Support Price (MSP). He explores how Indian agriculture can move from a government-led system to a market-based system, and what needs to be done to address farmer concerns while doing so. Dr. Ajit Ranade is the Chief Economist of the Aditya Birla Group. He writes regularly on economic and social issues in Livemint, Mumbai Mirror, Deccan Herald and elsewhere. BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.

Musician and scholar Dr Sumathi Krishnan talks to host Pavan Srinath about what makes a great musician and performer. She discusses how the Carnatic classical music tradition approaches training and moulding a musician, and shares snippets from ancient texts as well as stories from the lives of many musicians. Dr Sumathi Krishnan is a musician, trained both in Carnatic classical music as well as Hindustani bhajans, and has been performing for over 18 years. She also is a researcher and teacher, who did her PhD on using Indian classical music Varnams for voice training and creativity. She was also a discussant on BIC Streams in September 2020, on The World in Carnatic Music. BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.

This podcast presents the fourth and final segment of our four-part series 'Beethoven Variations: A Poet's Journey through the Music and Life of Beethoven' with renowned British poet Ruth Padel and eminent pianist Karl Lutchmayer. This series has been put together by Prateeti Punja Ballal. In Part IV of the series, Ruth and Karl take us through Beethoven's last years. His last great love affair, when he was forty-one, was a prelude to five years of barrenness, misery and writer's block − and then to some of the most poignant, profound and redemptive music ever written. In this four-part series, Ruth Padel takes us on an intimate journey through Beethoven's life and music, illustrated by her poetry from her recent book. Professor of Poetry at King's College London, she has written many collections of poetry, and books of non-fiction and fiction. Her earlier book Darwin: A Life in Poems, released on Darwin's centenary, captured her great great grandfather memorably. Concert pianist and lecturer, Karl Lutchmayer held an academic lectureship at the Trinity College of Music in London, now Trinity Laban, for fifteen years. He has played at all the major London concert halls and across the world, and his London lecture-recital series, Conversational Concerts, garnered critical and public acclaim. Karl performs Beethoven's music for us and gives us his insights into its composition and context. Ruth and Karl are joined by guest artists, soprano Nina Kanter, cellist David Waterman and the Endellion String Quartet, one of the world's leading quartets.

This podcast presents the third segment of our four-part series 'Beethoven Variations: A Poet's Journey through the Music and Life of Beethoven' with renowned British poet Ruth Padel and eminent pianist Karl Lutchmayer. This series has been put together by Prateeti Punja Ballal. In Part III of the series, titled 'The Essence of Romanticism', poet Ruth Padel and pianist Karl Lutchmayer take us through the time when Beethoven is thirty-five, and Napoleon's army captures and occupies Vienna and its Empire. Along with his anguish in this time of war, he keeps losing chances of love. Through it all, he continues writing works that will live forever, such as the Fifth Symphony, after which this episode gets its title. In this four-part series, Ruth Padel takes us on an intimate journey through Beethoven's life and music, illustrated by her poetry from her recent book. Professor of Poetry at King's College London, she has written many collections of poetry, and books of non-fiction and fiction. Her earlier book Darwin: A Life in Poems, released on Darwin's centenary, captured her great great grandfather memorably. Concert pianist and lecturer, Karl Lutchmayer held an academic lectureship at the Trinity College of Music in London, now Trinity Laban, for fifteen years. He has played at all the major London concert halls and across the world, and his London lecture-recital series, Conversational Concerts, garnered critical and public acclaim. Karl performs Beethoven's music for us and gives us his insights into its composition and context. Ruth and Karl are joined, for the Fifth Symphony, by guest artists from the South Asian Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra's founder-trustee, Ambassador Nirupama Menon Rao. The Orchestra is a peace-building initiative made up of musicians from the countries of South Asia and the South Asian diaspora.

This podcast presents the second segment of our four-part series 'Beethoven Variations: A Poet's Journey through the Music and Life of Beethoven' with renowned British poet Ruth Padel and eminent pianist Karl Lutchmayer. This series has been put together by Prateeti Punja Ballal. In Part II of the series, Ruth and Karl take us through the years when Beethoven contemplates suicide, then decides to 'live for his art'. Inspired at first by the French Revolution, and Napoleon whom he regards as 'a man of the people,' and also by falling deeply in love, Beethoven writes a series of innovative masterpieces. In the series, Ruth takes us on an intimate journey through Beethoven's life and music, illustrated by her poetry from her recent book. Professor of Poetry at King's College London, she has written many collections of poetry, and books of non-fiction and fiction. Her earlier book Darwin: A Life in Poems, released on Darwin's centenary, captured her great great grandfather memorably. Concert pianist and lecturer, Karl Lutchmayer held an academic lectureship at the Trinity College of Music in London, now Trinity Laban, for fifteen years. He has played at all the major London concert halls and across the world, and his London lecture-recital series, Conversational Concerts, garnered critical and public acclaim. Karl will perform Beethoven's music for us and give us his insights into its composition and context.

This is the first segment of our four-part series 'Beethoven Variations: A Poet's Journey through the Music and Life of Beethoven' with renowned British poet Ruth Padel and eminent pianist Karl Lutchmayer. This series has been put together by Prateeti Punja Ballal. In Part I of the series, Ruth and Karl take us through Beethoven's early years, his childhood in Bonn, his arrival in Vienna first as a virtuoso Pianist and then as a promising composer, and his early worries, at age 28, about deafness. In the series, Ruth will take us on an intimate journey through Beethoven's life and music, illustrated by her poetry from her recent book. Professor of Poetry at King's College London, she has written many collections of poetry, and books of non-fiction and fiction. Her earlier book Darwin: A Life in Poems, released on Darwin's centenary, captured her great great grandfather memorably. Concert pianist and lecturer, Karl Lutchmayer held an academic lectureship at the Trinity College of Music in London, now Trinity Laban, for 15 years. He has played at all the major London concert halls and across the world, and his London lecture-recital series, Conversational Concerts, garnered critical and public acclaim. Karl will perform Beethoven's music for us and give us his insights into its composition and context. In future episodes, they will be joined by guest artists, soprano Nina Kanter, cellist David Waterman and the Endellion String Quartet, one of the world's leading quartets, and the South Asian Symphony Orchestra with musicians from the countries of South Asia and the diaspora. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, and Stitcher.

Architects, educators and curators Rahul Mehrotra and Kaiwan Mehta talk to host Pavan Srinath about the ideas behind the ongoing State of Housing – Aspirations, Imaginaries and Realities in India exhibition at the Bangalore International Centre. Rahul, Kaiwan and Ranjith Hoskote curated the State of Housing exhibition in 2018 as a traveling exhibition, which is now at BIC in Bangalore for the month of September, 2020. The naturally ventilated gallery is open to the public on all days. If you are in Bangalore and would like to schedule a visit, write to operations (at) bangaloreinternationalcentre (dot) org. Learn more about the exhibition at the BIC website, and you can also attend the online screening of the film 'A Place to Live' by Sanjay Shah on the website during the month of September, 2020. On Episode 52 of BIC Talks, Rahul and Kaiwan discuss how State of Housing came about, what key questions the project seeks to answer, and they share glimpses of what various components of the exhibition offer to visitors – be they architects, people in government, urban governance researchers, or interested citizens and urban residents. Rahul Mehrotra is an architect, urbanist and educator. He is Professor of Urban Design and Planning at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, and is the Founder Principal of RMA Architects in Mumbai. Kaiwan Mehta is a theorist and critic in the fields of visual culture, architecture, and city studies. He is the Managing Editor of the art and architecture magazine DOMUS India and is a faculty member at CEPT University in Ahmedabad. The Exhibition is supported by RMZ Foundation, Brigade Group and Kohler. BIC Talks is brought to you by the Bangalore International Centre. Visit the BIC website for show notes, links and more information about the guests.