Incredible that for 40 years, Ustad Zakir Hussain hosted Prithvi Memorial Concert without a break, says Shashi Kapoor’s son Kunal

The memory of previous year’s concert lingers in the mind of Fazal, who performed on Friday during the 41st Memorial Concert that paid tribute to Hussain. “We (Fazal and Taufiq) are back at the memorial concert this year. No one had ever imagined that we would be performing without Zakir Bhai this year. However, I feel Zakir Bhai’s presence whenever I am playing tabla,” says Fazal.

Ever since Hussain started holding the concerts, he has never missed it. Hussain kept his ‘date’ with Prithvi Theatre by designing evenings of musical encounters. Over the years, these evenings have included amazing line-ups of musical legends and young aspiring musicians, both national and international, across genres of classical, fusion, jazz and folk.

“In some years, the concert date was changed, maybe to February 27, but Zakir Hussain never cancelled it,” says Kunal Kapoor, son of Jennifer and Shashi Kapoor as well as one of the theatre’s trustees.

Kunal’s son Zahan who played the lead in Netflix series Black Warrant, adds: “It is a celebration of Ustadji’s legacy.”

On Friday, as a prelude to the concert, a group of young musicians performed a piece called ‘Sweet Sixteen’, composed by Hussain in the 70s, on the theatre’s foyer. The concert opened with a jugalbandi of Fazal on the tabla and Rakesh Chaurasia on the flute. This was followed by an energetic performance by musician-singer. He sang ‘From the dark into the light’, which he had written as a tribute to Ustad Alla Rakha, Hussain’s father and a music icon.

Later on, several other musicians including Nastya Saraswati, Arka Chakraborty, Yogesh Samsi, Sridhar Parthasarthy, Sabir Khan and Shikhar Naad Qureshi performed at the packed theatre. Most of them used to perform with Hussain and he referred to them as his ‘usual suspects’. Clips of previous memorial concerts were played.

The concert’s finale piece was Hussain’s composition from his album ‘Making Music’.

Will the memorial concert be back next year? “We hope to keep this tradition alive. However, we don’t know what is going to happen next year,” says Fazal. “We hope to hold it next year too, Inshallah,” Kunal says.