Uday's Fusion Thyagaraja
Saregama
Rs 99

This is an album of six Thyagaraja compositions sung by a chorus directed by Uday (the album doesn't tell us much about him).

Titled Fusion Thyagaraja, it presents concert standards in a style it calls 'fusion'. Thyagaraja (18th century) is the most widely performed composer in south Indian classical music. With Muthuswamy Dikshitar and Shyama Shastri, he constitutes the revered trinity of Carnatic music.

All listeners of Carnatic music would be familiar with the compositions Uday has chosen for this album. The fusion bit comes in the way the orchestra is arranged, rather than in the way the compositions are sung. In fact, the compositions are, for the most part, sung straight, as any classical musician would. The twist comes with the conventional Carnatic accompaniment of tamboora, mridangam and violin making way for a keyboard-led arrangement, with occasional interludes of the flute (Srinivas), violin (Tyagaraju P), and mridangam, kanjira and

After having my ears burnt with the noise pollution that passes for music today, I thank God for Dream Theater's eleventh album A Dramatic Turn of Events. Of late even legendary bands seem to have succumbed to the popular demand for trash. The release of Metallica's St Anger and Chinese Democracy by Guns N' Roses made me lose faith in the future of music and made me skeptical about listening to any new albums released by bands I loved and cherished in my teenage years for the fear of having their once glorious image brutally tarnished.

A Dramatic Turn of Events was, however, surprisingly refreshing and has renewed my faith that true musicians do still exist. The opening track, On the Back of Angels, got me nostalgic and left me longing for more with its classic 90s Dream Theater sound. It even managed to pick the interest of my tone-deaf neighbor who asked me what heavenly music I was playing.

The band has left its epic music style intact, replete with complex time signatures,

Sarah McLachlan is to perform "Angel" at the dedication of Pennsylvania's 9/11 memorial as a tribute to the victims, families, friends, firefighters, and police whose lives were personally affected by the events of 9/11. A remembrance to those who died in the Twin Towers ten years ago, and how the events of that day unfolded and changed lives forever.

This song also makes me remember of that very day in my life. I remember coming home and looking at my parents glued to the TV watching smoke rising from an explosion at the World Trade Center. I recall the shot of the sunny blue day, before the explosion. I remember observing the pieces of rubble plummet from the towers and, then learn that the rubble were actually people. I remember thinking, "how terrible it must have been up there to make jumping down from the tallest building in the world appear like the better option."

I remember these things because they were permanently engraved into my mind and entwined into the cloth of America,