On Friday evening, the stars shined brighter over the sky just to make up for the rain that poured few weeks back. Two weeks back on a Friday, it poured like hell and the music show named Light up a life, organized by the IIT Madras Atma charity wing was postponed. This week it happened at the Open Air Theatre of IIT. And it happened with full josh.

Gangai Amaran‘s musical evening started exactly on the shceduled time. That’s something which happens only for some of the carnatic kutcheris in Chennai. And we know how Gangai Amaran can get the pulse of the crowd so fast. He did. From 7 in the evening till 10:30 it was sheer music. Music of all kinds Bhaghavathar, Kannadasan, A R Rahman, Vidyasagar, Ghazal, Hindi and Telugu film music. What reverberated even after the show were Illayaraja’s numbers that occupied the main theme of the show.

SPB Charan has the yesteryear SPB’s voice. Remember the number Then Sindhuthey Vaanam, Slightly feminine, very SPB. SPB Charan has that exact voice. And fortunately, like his dad he could dwell in any octave so profoundly. Some evergreen numbers that amazed me were Sankarabharanam and Sorgam Madhuviley. Added to it was his rendering to Manmadha Rasa. Seemed like SPBs version of the song, fantastic variation to Shankar Mahadevan’s original rendering.

The final medley lasted for more than 15 minutes where SPB Charan, Venkat Prabhu and the whole singing group were catching up on each other like a competition. The song that started all was Cheena Thaana and finally ended with Chinna Pasanga Nanga [Aruvadai Naal]. And as expected at the end, Gangai Amaran finished it with the Malar Polla Manam Vendum song that’s broadcasted everyday morning in Vijay TV.

IBM who was the sponsor of the show gave away goodies to the audience. Software as goodies? The last thing you would expect from a musical show. Yeah, they gave away a whole bunch of CDs that consisted of a enterprise edition of DB2 ver 8.1 [one that was looking to download from the net], Lotus domino and Web Sphere studio’s evaluation edition. Of course, the brochures that they gave away were finally flying high, as rockets. We know our guys, right.