Staccato, Chennai’s favourite band is back in the news and this time around it’s regarding their upcoming concert — a return to the public stage (for the band), after two years. In the meantime — the band’s lockdown musical experiment, Freshly Brewed, has gotten even more popular; they’ve released quite a few singles during the subsequent lockdowns; and Maathey, their cover version of the classic featuring vocals by Niranjana Ramanan on YouTube has now hit over 1.7 million views. We catch up with RH Vikram, founding member, to find out more about the upcoming concert and what’s next for the illustrious and much-loved band.
Staccato returns to a public concert after quite a while, how excited are you?
We’re super stoked! The last public concert we did was in February 2020, in Chennai. We have performed house-full concerts in Bengaluru and Hyderabad in these last two years, but always missed out on performing to our home crowd. The time has finally come and we cannot wait to premiere our Freshly Brewed act, live in Chennai!
What can we look forward to at the concert in terms of new compositions or covers or old hits?
Our primary aim is to give the audience a live experience of our Freshly Brewed series which we released during the lockdown. This is going to be a multilingual concert where we’ve handpicked the songs and re-arranged them with a choir. We will also perform some of our new compositions, in addition to the ones from our debut album, Elay.
Quite a few of your band mates are now also working with film music composers? How has that experience been? What’s the latest release from a Staccato band member that we can listen to online or elsewhere?
Our vocalist, Niranjana Ramanan, has had two very exciting releases recently. She is the voice behind the viral hit Soul of Doctor by Anirudh Ravichander and has also had her debut playback release in Tamil for the Mozart of Madras AR Rahman, in R Parthiban’s latest film Iravin Nizhal. I’ve made my Telugu industry debut with the sensational film Middle Class Melodies, while Gowtham Bharadwaj has already had multiple playback releases in Telugu. Abinandan, our guitarist, was behind the entire soundtrack for the much acclaimed film, Soorarai Potru for GV Prakash.
Has the band released any new music in the last few months?
We released a track as part of maajja’s Yaazh Festival. The track is called Idhu Varai and is a follow up to our previous love song Neela Vaan. We intend to release an EP by the end of this year. Also we will be debuting as composers for an upcoming Amazon Prime Video web series.
What has the pandemic taught you as a band? Have you learned/unlearned anything?
As a band, it has brought us closer. We have brainstormed, put all of our time, work and money into making our opus Freshly Brewed. We got to learn how to work effectively, virtually, and that was a great learning!
Finally, tell us about the upcoming concert and what’s next for Staccato?
Our upcoming concert will be the premiere of our Freshly Brewed LIVE series where we will be collaborating with the ElFe Choir. We will be performing songs that have transcended boundaries of genres and languages. The audience will have a never-before-heard experience, listening to all their favourite tracks in a ‘freshly brewed’ arrangement.
Staccato performs at Mad Vibe Fest, July 16, 6 pm onwards. At Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall, Chetpet.
romal@newindianexpress.com
@elromal