(Kala Ramnath in Concert / photo: Pieter de Rooij)
Violinist Kala Ramnath, who will be featured in my programme Gharana on the 29th of February, will be the next recipient of the ‘Kumar Gandharva Award’, India’s most prestigious national award for the best musician under forty-five years of age. Kala will receive the award on April 8th, 2008. Furthermore, Kala’s album ‘Kala’ -released in 2004- is chosen as one of the 50 Best Top of the World albums in world music magazine Songlines‘ March 2008-issue, its 50th ‘collector’s edition’. And last but not least, in the same issue Kala is also chosen as a member of ‘the Songlines 50 Allstars Orchestra’, a selection of the world’s greatest instrumentalists to form a world music super-group. Considering all these impressive facts, I guess world music lovers can’t really afford to skip a beat of my upcoming programme on Kala by the end of this month!