Raga Concert with Sitar Master Paul Livingstone and Friends
Center of Universal Light is thrilled to host an evening of Sitar Raga by Master Paul Livingstone on July 15, 2019, 7:30pm, immediately following Naam Yoga with Dr. Nicole, at the Old Town Center for the Arts, Studio B. Tickets are $8.00 per person for this magical evening that will leave you refreshed and inspired. Come early and enjoy some energizing Naam Yoga, then slip into the peace of the music. Currently on tour with his wife and musical partner, Alma, an accomplished Sarangi player, CUL is honored to bring them to Cottonwood as part of their journey.
This article By DAVID DUPONT, Sentinel News Editor, Bowling Green, OH, beautifully describes the moment you will fall in love with Sitar Master Paul Livingstone's Music and Spirit.
When Paul Livingstone was 12 he first heard the music of Indian maestro Ravi Shankar.
The sounds of Shankar's sitar washed over him, Livingstone said in a recent telephone interview. "I felt like I was under this waterfall of music that was cleaning me out head to toe," he recalled. "It was such a joyful experience I knew that's what I wanted to do."
Livingstone went on to study sitar, including with Shankar himself and has become a leading American master on the instrument, collaborating with a global cast of musicians performing as well as composing.
Livingstone will present a free concert with tabla player Pramod Upadhyaya Friday at 7 p.m. at Grounds for Thought, 174 S. Main St., Bowling Green. The Bowling Green State University tabla class, taught by Rob Wallace, will perform a brief opening set. At 2 p.m. that day Livingstone and Upadhyaya will present a master class at the arts village on campus.
Livingstone, who was born in Beirut in 1970, had to wait three years after hearing Shankar before he traveled to India and first got his hands on a sitar so he could begin his studies.
He had already been playing rock and jazz, but "this was a more difficult path."
"A seed was planted very deep in my heart."
His studies continued in California, where he studied with a number of Indian masters as well as teachers in other forms of music.
He had studied under Amiya Dasgupta, himself a student of Shankar. After Dasgupta's death, Livingstone met with Shankar backstage and they talked about the late musician. Shankar told him he was part of "the family" and invited him to his house.
Shankar, recognized as a genius as a performer of Indian classical music and a composer who melded Indian and Western music, was also a devoted teacher. "He had a wonderful balance of strictness and humor," Livingstone said. "He loved to teach. It wasn't like a burden. It was part of passing on the art."
Shankar's music was "profoundly deep and insightful and always sublimely creative," Livingstone said, and the same was true of his teaching. Now "I try to pass on the gifts I've been given."
Ragas have their own strict discipline and rules.
Simply put a raga is a series of notes akin to a scale, but the notes are different whether the line is rising or descending. There are "king" and "queen" tones that define the character of the raga, and each has certain characteristic phrases and embellishments associated with it.
Indian music has independent rhythmic elements, which can be mixed and matched with the ragas.
Yet, Livingstone said, "the expression has to be very personal. You can hear the same raga 100 times and each time it will be different."
A raga is like a person, Livingstone said, and the musician develops a relationship to the raga as with a person. That requires the musician to leave the ego behind, he said, and lose oneself in the music and allow oneself to be filled with the breath of creative energy.
That concept of creative breath, like the breath Yahweh breathed into Adam, exists in many spiritual traditions, Christian, Hindi, Hebrew. "When you breathe life into the music," he said, "there's a life beyond the skeletal rules, the science, otherwise a computer could play it," he said. "You have to bring to it what you have in the moment. For me, it's also a very profound spiritual practice in itself. It's not just something you reproduce and copy. It's something you have to dig deep within yourself and generate each time."
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Date and Time
Monday Jul 15, 2019
7:30 PM - 9:00 PM MST
Monday, July 15, 2019, 7:30pm
Location
Old Town Center for the Arts, Studio B
633 N. 5th Street
Cottonwood, AZ 86326
Fees/Admission
$8.00 per person, cash or check at the door. Call to reserve your seat or mat space. All proceeds go to the Artist.
Contact Information
Kimberly Kelley (928) 864-5230
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