Pt. Ravi Shankar performs with daughter Anoushka at his last concert in Bangalore

This was an evening that music aficionados were waiting for ever since it was announced that Pandit Ravi Shankar would be playing his last concert in the Garden City.
The three-hour-long concert saw lovers of classical music and newbies, as well as Indians and foreign nationals, in attendance.
Rows of marigolds draped the stage and complemented the soft gold and yellow stage lights.And in keeping with the theme, Anoushka Shankar came on stage wearing a white-and-gold anarkali.
The Grammy-nominated sitar player said, “It is an honour to open for my father” before she started with the Raag Puriyadhanashree and her father’s famous composition Vachaspati.
After Anoushka’s 45-minute performance, the pandit himself took the stage. “Do you remember me?” he asked the audience, and added, “I’ve put on a lot of weight. It is my pleasure to play for Bangalore amid a host of talented musicians. They are very fast, but I will try to keep up with them.”
He needn’t have worried, as his fingers swept eloquently across his sitar as he played Raag Yaman Kalya and Raag Tilak Shyam.
It was a festival of all musical instruments as the tenor of the flute, the sweetness of the sitar and the bass of the tabla evoked much applause.
The evening was peppered with a jugalbandi between the tabla and the mridangam musicians, which started as a contest and amalgamated into a show of music masters.
TOI spotted Uzma Irfan, Namrata G, Captain Gopinath among the music-loving Bangaloreans who made it a point to be part of Pandit Ravi Shankar’s farewell to Bangalore.