PWNED By An 89 Year Old

There were highs and lows at last night's performance by Ravi Shankar, and not just because our guts were full of tasty Palazzio pasta.

The show started off with the admission that Anoushka Shankar was ill and would not perform, which left her percussionist, flautist, and two tambura players to do a twenty minute number that was the first act before intermission. Not that the performance wasn't great - the call and response between flute and hand drum was a highlight, but it was a huge let down not to see half the featured attraction and to only get a brief performance before an unnecessary break. I was not the only one in the audience who was concerned of what would come.

By 8pm, the ensemble returned to the stage and Ravi Shankar was assisted out to the main center riser. Naturally, there were ovations and he bowed to audience in thanks. He was tiny and frail, and his assistant on the tambura set up his sitar and even helped him tune it. Shankar picked up a microphone and said with a raspy, soft voice "Welcome to Santa Barbara," which drew laughs, but also showed what a powerful and commanding presence he was, inviting us to his recital, not we receiving him. As he often does in his records and in concert he acted as teacher, explaining a little about the raga and counting for the particular piece about to be played. And then, mastery...

The first song was a slow, wistful tune that was like the Indian blues - lots of slow, sustained notes and string bends that he played unaccompanied. It was a warm up of sorts, and towards the end of the piece he started throwing some runs across the neck and getting into it. He must have been playing for close to 25 or 30 minutes. The next tune was shorter and had accompaniment by his tabla player Tanmoy Bose, but it was a much faster tempo and had more of the signature style of his upbeat compositions: sharp interplay with the tabla and few breaks in the winding melodies.

By the time Shankar and ensemble started the third song, they were ready to rock. He explained the 11-count of the raga, "4+4," and as if to remember what makes 11, "1 ½ + 1 ½", and then played perhaps the most fiery song of the evening. There was a lot of improvisation and space for Shankar to wail away on the sitar while passing the spotlight to the tabla and flute. Watching him play, with his skinny legs dangling off the platform instead of cross legged like the others made him look old and sickly, but watching his body and shoulders move as though he was wrestling the notes from his instrument, done with the youth and aggressiveness of an athlete. Observing his fingers plucking and sliding across the strings and frets was almost gentle, delicately and effortlessly playing with no signs of his age. Shankar would whip up a part and then point to Bose, challenging him to play the part back like a Yoda-esque version of James Brown conducting his musicians. You could see the joy they had playing together and hear it in the music.

The last song was about the same length as the second, and had more room for his side players to trade parts, to which Shankar played rhythmically in the back as the other instruments took lead, eventually reemerging at the front of the song and guiding the performance to a close. He bowed and thanked the audience three times, but what said the most about watching him graciously leave the stage under applause was him brushing away several of the other musicians who had come to his side to assist him off. After the 90 minutes he had played, he was fired up and could have floated off the stage. That vitality and intense energy that he'd coaxed from his sitar was rejuvenating, and quite a feat for the old master. What the first "half" of the program lacked, Ravi Shankar more than compensated for in the second. Quite masterful in a word.