Midnight Ragas with Kala Ramnath & Jayanthi Kumaresh

Hindustani violin and Carnatic veena in a midnight jugalbandi across India’s two classical traditions 

Midnight at the Barbican. The Hall empties after the evening concert. Then, at the stroke of twelve, two of India’s foremost string players meet on stage for a jugalbandi — a duet form where musicians from different traditions improvise together, responding to each other in real time. 

Kala Ramnath, a Hindustani violinist known for phrases that move between yearning and stillness, draws ragas with her bow in long, expressive arcs. Beside her, Jayanthi Kumaresh plays the Saraswati veena, rooted in the Carnatic tradition — its plucked strings producing a quality entirely different from Ramnath’s bowed lines. Ishaan Ghosh (tabla) and Sai Giridhar (mridangam) anchor the North and South Indian rhythmic systems respectively. The result is a conversation between two musical languages happening in the room, improvised and unrepeatable. This is the kind of concert you tell people about for years. 

Kala Ramnath – violin

Jayanthi Kumaresh – Carnatic veena 

Sukhvinder Singh Pinky – tabla

Sai Giridhar – mridangam

Location: Barbican Hall