Ashok Parulekar and  Nayana  Hein

NEW YORK(TIP): The music we play can  help transform the world .  A new hour-long film, Eternal Journey, by India’s renowned violinist Dr. L. Subramaniam,  premiered recently  for a select audience at the Harbor Grand Studio in New York. In this captivating film, across time and space, Dr. Subramaniam and the late composer and musician Sri Chinmoy engage in profound musical conversation.

Sri Chinmoy and Dr. L. Subramaniam had a close friendship founded on their mutual love of music. “We must play together,” Sri Chinmoy remarked at what would prove to be their last meeting together in 2006. However, that was not to transpire before Sri Chinmoy passed away the following year.

Maestro Subramaniam did not forget Sri Chinmoy’s intriguing comment, and it inspired him to put together a cinematic and musical tour de force. In “Eternal Journey”, video recordings taken of Sri Chinmoy during his lifetime, in which he  plays on the esraj, cello, vibraphone and Western flute, are seamlessly ‘answered’ by Dr. Subramaniam on the violin. In one remarkable section they appear almost to be playing together, simultaneously.

Dr. Subramaniam is celebrated worldwide for the diversity of his contribution to the world of music. He is an authority on the classical Carnatic  tradition and Western classical music, and acclaimed for his violin virtuosity and compositions in orchestral fusion.  L. Subramaniam is an accomplished composer and conductor, and he has performed with such notable orchestras as the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin State Opera, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Zubin Mehta), the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Oslo Philharmonic.  He  has composed the film scores for the films “Salaam Bombay” (1988) and “Mississippi Masala” (1991) directed by Mira Nair, in addition to being the featured violin soloist in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Little Buddha” (1993) and “Cotton Mary” (1999) of Merchant-Ivory productions.

Sri Chinmoy composed over 22,000 hauntingly soulful songs and offered profound inner peace though his music. “Music is a universal language,” Sri Chinmoy said. “It is through music that one might have the capacity to express the sublime.” Performing his own music compositions, Sri Chinmoy offered well over 700 Peace Concerts at such venues as London’s Royal Albert Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Damrosch Amphitheater, Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan, the Kamakura Daibutsu, the Sydney Opera House, the Sorbonne in Paris, and the United Nations Headquarters, to name just a few.

“Through music individuals can sometimes find something to share, something in common, and thus begin to build a feeling of oneness in the heart and in the world,” explained Sri Chinmoy. “Through music we can expand ourselves.”

Says Dr. Subramaniam: “Music is a vast ocean, and no one can claim to know it all. The more you know, the more you realize how little you know. It is an eternal quest.”

Juxtaposing the past and the present, L. Subramaniam and Sri Chinmoy defy the finite to embark on an eternal journey through music and film.

It is expected that “Eternal Journey” will be made available for a wide audience some time in 2019.

For more information see srichinmoy.org

 Ashok Parulekar Mob 917 815 2887 (USA) or 91 99 70730161(India)