Beyond the concert - GK in stl

The evening of May 17 was one part of a fuller week (or should we say few months).

A few weeks the concert, Jasmine Osby of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch spoke with the artists — a conversation that ran ahead of the evening and helped bring the concert to a wider St. Louis audience. It was a meaningful moment of visibility for this kind of work in this city.

Before the hall filled, we held an open pre-show conversation at The Sheldon. The format was deceptively simple — the artists on stage, the audience with questions, Megha facilitating. People came curious. The conversation gave the music context that mattered when the performance began. We're still working through the recordings — the full Q&A will be on Lekha in the weeks ahead.

That Tuesday, May 19, Ganesh, Kumaresh, and Trichy S. Krishnaswamy performed a short charity show at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital — for children, parents, and staff. The visit came together through our team, including food raconteur Ashok Nageshwaran, and in coordination with Cardinal Glennon's staff. The artists presented a peppy original composition and led a call-and-response exchange that brought the whole room in. The response was overwhelmingly positive -- and especially meaningful for us at Janya. Being able to contribute even a moment of joy to a community that deserves it is everything we aspire for.

What emerged across the engagements of this visit was consistent: artists who understand that their responsibility to an art form does not end at the edge of the stage.

The willingness to engage — with new audiences, with a city encountering music in a new way — is itself a form of what makes this tradition survive and travel. It is the same impulse behind Ganesh & Kumaresh's Temple of Music and Fiddling Monk, extended into a week in St. Louis.

For Janya, documenting this visit matters. It is an argument for what is possible when artists of this calibre are given not just a stage but a genuine welcome — and for what St. Louis (and the broader region) is capable of when it shows up.

Additional documentation from the week — conversations, reflections, exchanges from the pre-show Q&A — is being processed and will appear on Lekha over the coming weeks.