The composer was featured on the first selection, the theme from Bombay, playing the melody using a breathy wooden flute patch on the Continuum Fingerboard synthesizer controller. The exotic melodies and instrumentation of Rahman’s music captivated the audience from the downbeat. The concert featured 16 vocal and instrumental selections, including five medleys from various soundtracks.
Deserving special mention are faculty members Eugene Friesen, who conducted the Berklee World Strings, and Matthew Nicholl, who oversaw the preparation of the orchestral parts for the arrangements penned by eight student and faculty arrangers. Philip and Valladares, the concert’s coproducers, were part of a group that made the concert an extraordinary event. Philip also served as the music director and pianist for the concert of Rahman’s music that was performed by some 90 Berklee student and faculty musicians and dancers.
Philip and Valladares are the prime movers behind the Berklee India Exchange, which fosters mentorships and cultural connections between Berklee students and top figures in the Indian entertainment industry. Nicknamed “The Mozart of Madras,” Rahman has won two Academy Awards and numerous honors and awards in India and elsewhere, and sold 150 million albums.įaculty member Annette Philip ’09 and Berklee City Music staff member Clint Valladares ’98 (both of whom grew up in India) were key in facilitating the Rahman visit. When word got out of a concert of Rahman’s music at Boston’s Symphony Hall to raise funds for a Berklee scholarship in his name, tickets to the show sold out six weeks before the event.Īmerican audiences may be familiar with Rahman’s music through such films as Slumdog Millionaire, The Hundred-Foot Journey, 127 Hours, and other English-language films, but millions of moviegoers throughout India and other Asian nations are fans of his huge catalog of songs and scores for more than 140 films. Rahman, India’s foremost film composer and songwriter, sent a surge of excitement through the Berklee campus to Boston’s Indian community and beyond.
The October 24, 2014, tribute concert and honorary doctorate presentation to A.R. Rahman sang on the final song “Vande Mataram.”
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