Nirmala Rajasekar and Co.

Last Sunday I sort of spontaneously decided to go to an IMSOM hosted concert featuring Ms. Nirmala Rajasekar.  I met Nirmala back in May and aside from being super-nice and talented, she mentioned how she'd be playing in September, and so I looked up the show, and day-of I decided to go. 
It was in a little room inside an auditorium at St. Catherine's that was really very intimate and filled with orange-upholstered seats.  When I got there, it was already pretty crowded, and I recognized a few players that were with her last time sitting in the audience.  Honestly I felt a bit out of place for different reasons, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  Nirmala is extremely talented, and the ensemble playing with her were great as well.  During the first half of the show, she recognized her "mentor, and guru," and elderly woman in the front row, whom she invited up on stage.  Nirmala stooped to touch the woman's feet in great respect, and presented her with a gift and her new "Into the Raga" album.  Then, we took a 10 minute break of cookies and coffee.
When we returned, we got right back into the music, playing some really long compositions.  I honestly am not that knowledgable with the ways of keeping rhythm for this style of music and everyone else did, but after some time, I fell into it, and it was a lovely atmosphere.  It was a nice familiar feeling with almost everyone in the room patting their hands in the same rhythm, right along with the players, dropping our palms on the dominant beat.  It was really fun, and very long.  After everything was said and done, it had been just about 4 hours.  We split pretty soon after it ended, and were thoroughly impressed.