Midnight Ragas

At the stroke of twelve, two of India’s foremost string players meet on stage for a jugalbandi, a duet form where musicians from different traditions improvise together, responding to each other in real time. Kala Ramnath, a Hindustani violinist known for phrases that move between yearning and stillness, draws ragas with her bow in long, expressive arcs. Beside her, Jayanthi Kumaresh plays the Saraswati veena, rooted in the Carnatic tradition — its plucked strings producing a quality entirely different from Ramnath’s bowed lines. Sukhvinder Singh Pinky (tabla) and Sai Giridhar (mridangam) anchor the North and South Indian rhythmic systems respectively. The result is a conversation between two musical languages happening in the room, improvised and unrepeatable.