Behind The Glow: What It’s Like to Attend a Candlelight Concert in India
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“Wanna go?”
K sent me a link to a ‘Candlelight concert’ show which was going to take place in a few days from when he sent me the message on Whatsapp. I had seen photos and videos of these shows from Europe in stunning venues on Instagram. And now they were doing shows across cities in India in tie-up with local artists. The prices seemed steep, and the venue was a four star hotel. I responded saying “not sure if it’s worth it”, but went on Instagram to check their videos out.
Funnily, I had some messages from K over there too. First was an ad by ‘Candlelight Concerts’ that they were doing a show in Visakhapatnam, the city we were in, visiting my parents.
“Looks like a scam. Not sure if it’s a real event” – one of his messages said.
I burst out laughing and waited to have a conversation about it when we were in the same room.
“So what is it? Have you made up your mind about whether this event is a scam or not?”
“I looked it up, it’s a legit event”
So the ‘wanna go’ message was sent after some fact-checking. I saw them in the wrong chronological order. After a little bit of debating, we finally decided to ask our parents if they’d be interested in experiencing this unique concert. Mom was immediately interested, Dad said ‘NO’ extremely fast. That’s it, Mom’s call it was, we decided to witness the candle-night concert with mom. We booked tickets for ‘Zone A’, which is supposed to be closest to the performers. Now here’s the thing, the web page (liveyourcity.com) for Visakhapatnam did not reveal who was going to perform, so that was under wraps until the last minute.
Saturday night, when we reached the venue, Fairfield by Marriott, there were beautiful candles everywhere, and of-course they were fake – electric lamps. Which we obviously knew, no venue in their right mind would allow hundreds or thousands of real candles at a concert. “It’s a fire hazard to have real candles,” I told mom. We got our entry bands on our hands and entered the primary hall where the concert was going to take place. A brown grand piano which had evidently experienced much wear and tear stood at the center of the air-conditioned hall, surrounded by candles. The venue looked beautiful, and the candles seemed like the real deal from afar, just like the pictures.
“You know what will be disappointing? If it’s only one pianist,” I softly told both mom and K after we took our seats and waited for the musician(s) to arrive.
As the clock ticked to 9, an announcement informed the audience to keep our phones on silent and not take any pictures or videos. “The musicians have requested that the audience can only record the last song of the set”.
“They said musicians, plural,” I got excited and whispered to K.
But then, a pianist, dressed in a suit, with a kind smile, climbed up the stage, introduced himself and said he would be playing some classic hits from Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Hindi films.
He started the show with by playing the piano version of the song ‘Srivalli’ from the hit Telugu movie Pushpa. It was immaculate.
“Is he really playing?” I whispered.
It sounded so flawless, like a recorded version. But yes, he was playing for real, and at the back of my mind, I kept hoping for more musicians to join him in the next track. No such luck.
The candle-night concert was a solo piano show and honestly the musician was great, although he seemed stage-shy when he spoke to the audience in between tracks, choosing to look at the ground while speaking, instead of looking the listeners.
For the next one hour, he played familiar tunes, kept the audience engaged, but we couldn’t help thinking throughout the show that even if there had just been another musician, it would’ve been so much more fun. An unknown face doing covers of songs that have little scope for improvisation and deviations, can get a wee bit monotonous with a one-man-cast. The set ended on a high note though, with the performer asking the audience to sing along to his piano cover of ‘Why This Kolaveri Di?’, the viral hit from 2011.
When the show ended, we looked up the events page and saw that another upcoming concert in Bengaluru had three musicians listed for their candlelight event.
If I had to rate the concert we attended in Visakhapatnam, it would be 3 on 5. It’s worth an experience if the show is happening in your city and you do not travel a lot. Also, once we were there, we realized the seating doesn’t really matter, especially since the venue was small, so depending on where you decided to attend, you can just book any zone tickets.
If you travel quite a bit, maybe attend one an event in a city with more musicians. I would love to attend one of these in Europe!
This is the link to look up for upcoming candlelight concerts in cities across India – https://liveyourcity.com/en
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