How does one put fame to good use? Let the spotlight on oneself fall on that which remains in the dark? And deploy the adulation responsibly, knowing that when one speaks, the world listens? The two legends at the helm of the SOI Spring 2025 Season have made music sound ethereal not only through their mastery of the baton but because their art, like Nietzsche said, comes enveloped in gratitude—for the fame and for the opportunities along the path to fame. And they pay it forward, with the choices they make—when Maestro Zubin Mehta takes the podium in Kashmir or supports the music education of Arab artistes so that one day they may play in the Israel Philharmonic. Or, when Sir Mark Elder relentlessly pursues the cause of government support to music and more opportunities for young musicians. “Each part of the artistic world needs its champions—its figureheads—the people who are going to speak up on behalf of the art,” he says in an interview for the cover story of this issue.
When he breaks the fourth wall and contorts the possibilities of the script, Satish Alekar speaks up on behalf of theatre. And when he injects levity into our rituals to lay bare their hollowness in his play Mahanirvan, it is eminence well used. Having been performed 50 years ago at the NCPA when the Tata Theatre was yet to be built, it now arrives in a new production—on a bier, might I add, festooned with balloons.
What art also continually lays bare are perceived boundaries: between the bhakti of a Rajput princess and Sufism; between Kathak and Flamenco; between indie and rock music. However, when the Nizami Bandhu sing qalams written by Mirabai at Sama’a, or Aditi Bhagwat and Bettina Castaño move in unison at the Spectrum Dance Festival, or a band from Pune performs a genre-bending set at Home Grown, art returns to its equilibrium, to wash, as Picasso once said, the dust of daily life off our souls.
Snigdha Hasan
Editor
