DR. LUIS DIAS
Around six months ago, I received a call from Dr. Cavas Bilimoria from the SOI (Symphony Orchestra of India) Music Academy Mumbai. For the Academy’s grand graduation concert in April 2025, they were inviting participation from young musicians (under 18) who played orchestral bowed stringed instruments (violin, viola, cello, and double-bass) and flutes to a high standard from other cities, to join the ranks of its student orchestra.
Audition videos would have to be sent by me within a deadline, and the selection would be made by the SOI Music Academy faculty.
I sent videos that met the criteria from my Child’s Play students and young musicians in the community who play in our Camerata Goa. Two were chosen, one violin (Niah Noronha, student of Winston Collaco) and one cello (Manuel Dias, student of several overseas cello teachers before the pandemic, and
subsequently taught by me).
The music was sent across, and the candidates learned their parts. I rehearsed them at my house, and at the SOI music camp at our Child’s Play premises in March 2025, conductor Osman Yarullin and cellist Yulia Gallyamova worked with both students, in addition to teaching other participants in the music camp.
My wife Chryselle and I travelled with Niah and Manuel for the week-long rehearsal sessions before the concert. The Marine Drive accommodation was a short walk away from the rehearsal venue, the splendid Jamshed Bhabha Theatre and several other spaces for sectional rehearsals at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai.
We met our counterparts from Pune and Kochi. The Pune contingent was 11-strong, all violin, all studying with the formidable Suzuki violin teacher Rama Chhobe. The two from Kochi, also violin, were students of Carol George, long-standing violinist with the SOI, and who, although now based in Kochi, returns to play in the orchestra for its biannual
concert seasons.
Billed as ‘SOI Academy Orchestra and Friends’ under Yarullin’s baton, the programme featured 10 orchestral works, all soundtrack music from blockbuster films (and one video game) meant for children, young adults, and the young at heart: The main theme from ‘Meet the Flintstones’ (Curtin/Barbera/Hanna); House Stark theme and the main theme from ‘Game of Thrones’ (Ramin/Djawdi); ‘Mario’ suite (Koji Kondo); ‘Ot Ulybki’ from ‘Little Racoon and the little thing in the pool’ (Vladimir Shainsky); ‘Harry Potter’ medley (John Williams); ‘Under the Sea’ from ‘The Little Mermaid’ (Alan Menken); Main theme from ‘Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’ (Frank Churchill); ‘Cruella de Vil’ from ‘101 Dalmatians’ (Mel Levin); ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ medley (Badelt/Zimmer); Theme from ‘The Pink Panther’ (Henry Mancini). The SOI Academy choir sang the lyrics to ‘Flintstones’, ‘Ot Utybki’, ‘Under the Sea’, ‘Big Bad Wolf’, and ‘Cruella’.
These were no watered-down easy-to-play versions. All were virtuosic arrangements by veteran arranger Seva Youdenitch. Indeed, all the pieces together could be regarded as a concerto for orchestra, with pyrotechnics for all sections: strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion.
The strings had their work particularly cut out for them in the ‘Harry Potter’ medley and ‘Pirates’. The woodwinds and brass had spotlight moments in every work, memorably in ‘The Pink Panther’, with a little girl from the Academy doing the slinky smoky signature honours on saxophone. The large percussion section had everything including the kitchen sink from maracas, xylophones, marimba, to bass drum and cymbals, and some great parts for celesta (‘Harry Potter’ for example) and improvisatory solos on grand piano (‘Mario’ suite among others). The whole percussion came especially alive in
‘Under the Sea’.
The detail and discipline in sectional and tutti rehearsals were quite instructive. Yarullin led the SOI Academy and Friends orchestra, while SOI music director, maestro Marat Bisnegaliev, conducted the second half of the programme featuring solos by students of the SOI Academy accompanied by the SOI Chamber Orchestra. These were delightful showpieces, the highlight being an original work for piano and orchestra (‘Echoes of Dawn’), a premiere by little prodigy Ayaan Deshpande (who made his Goa debut in a benefit concert for Child’s Play exactly a year ago) composed in three weeks in time for the concert. A double-bass solo with orchestra was played on an instrument donated by maestro
Zubin Mehta.
It was so refreshing to have our children experience the sonorities of woodwinds, brass and percussion, and played to such an advanced level compared to the general drought we have in Goa, confined largely to strings. I lament this all the more so (and I risk repeating myself here, but it can’t be said often enough to counter all the amnesic falsehood that appears in the Goan press) because in my own youth we did have woodwinds and brass, maybe not to a very high level, but at least we had them.
We have lost so much in just a few decades, but instead of making concerted collaborative efforts to regain what we have lost, we get distracted by festivals, charades, farces, and drivel in the press about a
musical ‘Renaissance’.
In contrast, what we saw and heard in Mumbai is an oasis where music education is taken extremely seriously, and the results are gloriously visible and audible. One hopes this becomes an annual affair, with participation from even more locations, a national youth orchestra movement in the truest sense.
The commitment in some of the Academy students was truly inspirational. One young violin student travels from Pune to Mumbai twice weekly for lessons; another commutes 40 kilometres across the city. Yet, another family moved house, changed schools and all the adjustments that come with uprooting oneself, just so their daughter could make it to music lessons.
I was fortunate to be seated next to Rama Chhobe at the concert, so we had a chance to speak before it began. She is a powerhouse, working flat out through the week including weekends (Sundays are the busiest) with over 200 students currently
studying with her.
I joked with her that we need more Rama Chhobes in India for the other stringed instruments, the viola and cello. Indeed, among the 15 visiting musicians from Pune, Goa, and Kochi, there was no viola player, and Manuel was the only cellist, the rest were all violinists.
Whenever I visit the NCPA, with its acoustically stunning jewels, especially the Tata and Jamshed Bhabha Theatres, constructed so lovingly, painstakingly, with input from world-renowned acousticians such as Cyril Harris (1917-2011) who in his long life designed over a 100 halls including the Lincoln Centre, Metropolitan Opera House, the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, I think with frustration and anger of Goa’s wasted opportunities.
Our Kala Academy should and could have been Goa’s answer to Mumbai’s NCPA. Instead, we have through ignorance, incompetence, apathy and mismanagement its current
deplorable state.
Goa seems to have a frog-in-the-well outlook, almost defiantly content with the status quo when it comes to music education and performance. As long as ‘chamchas’ write fawning rubbish, and vain glorious photos appear in the press and social media, and videos and reels on Instagram, nothing else seems to matter. Maybe Goa deserves to be left behind.
