Sonam Kalra Live at the IIC

If music be the food of life — with due apologies to the Bard — I’m never going on a diet! So I’ve got music streaming out of every device that is capable of doing so. But nothing beats a live performance. And when it involves gospel, jazz and ballads, I’m in heaven.

Listening to Sonam Kalra sing a few months ago transported me to that paradise. The ease with which she moved across musical genres left me — and I’m sure every member of the audience in that packed hall — by turns dancing, tapping my feet, swaying, hooting, clapping and teary-eyed. So when I heard that she will be performing again, I did a little jig right there.

The Delhi-based Kalra wears her eclectic training lightly (Indian classicists Shubha Mudgal and Sarathi Chatterjee, tenor Hur Chul Yung, soprano Sita Singh Bueller, and Ashley Clement have been her teachers). And her music is a joyous mix of everything she’s learnt: the ever-moving and uplifting hymns Amazing Grace and Joyful Joyful; the melancholic Irish ballad Danny Boy; the immensely popular Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Imagine and Bridge Over Troubled Waters; and the lilting, eternal jazz favourites Mack the Knife, Under My Skin, Orange Coloured Sky or Fever — Sonam brings to them all freshness and gaiety that’s invigorating and infectious. With only a piano accompanying her, she ensures that her greatest asset, her voice, is not drowned by fussy instrumentation. And her wit keeps the audience entertained even when she’s not crooning.

I’m reaching early to avoid the crush. See you there.

‘Notes From Here and There’ by Sonam Kalra, at the India International Centre, 40 Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi. On Nov 22, at 6.30 pm. Entry free.