“In 2019, they didn’t play together virtually because it is very difficult,” Rivikiran said. “You have to get recordings because when you try to play together, there is a time lag because of the internet speeds can vary in different places. It is very difficult to synchronize. And so we brought all of these recordings together to make one piece. That symphony was written by me. It is interesting even as a purely artistic exercise because it covered 72 different scales during 7-8 minutes. It was meant to symbolize the speed at which our planet is changing.”

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the Melharmony Festival went virtual. And because many performing artists were hit hard by the pandemic because their livelihoods shut down with the venues they would perform at, Ravikiran decided to do something about it. And due to the virtual 2019 concert, the Melharmony Foundation wasn’t caught totally unprepared when the world started shutting down.

“That concert for the Musicians COVID Relief Fund, MCRF, didn’t do too bad,” Ravikiran said. “We were able to get about $70,000, which went to help a lot of musicians, especially the poorer communities. We still had some funds left from the last year, which we are still sending to artists even now. We are trying to support artists as best we can. If you look at the total number of artists who participated in the Melharmony Festival last year, it was 100 plus. It was the same this year. But my specific concept might have had about 30-35 artists. Even in 2020, we had the twin composer festival even though the fundraiser was a part of the festival. We honored Muttusvami Dikshitar & Beethoven.”

This year, the Melharmony Festival was a strictly virtual set of concerts.

“This year’s festival features Schubert and Shyama Shastri, who are phenomenal contributors in their respective worlds,” Ravikiran said. “Essentially, for example, artists for this year who were involved with me arranged pieces of Schubert and then I also arranged pieces of Shyama Shastri. We presented both. There were two compositions of Shyama Shastri that I arranged for them. They recorded both of them. And then they also recorded a Schubert piece. All of this they did in an auditorium this year. They recorded together.”

And as always, Melharmony was infused in the concert.

“The Shyama Shastri is the Melharmony piece,” Ravikiran said. “There were melody pieces that I harmonized for the orchestra. But the Schubert piece, I wanted it to be presented purely. And then I presented some Shyama Shastri pieces purely. So the idea of this concept is to bring melody as a separate movement. It brings harmony as a separate movement. And then it brings Melharmony in another arrangement.”

The concerts, which were originally planned to be in-person in November 2021, can be accessed at shaale.com at a nominal price.

“These are still paid concerts,” Ravikiran said. “But there could be some excerpts or trailers on YouTube.com. They are very reasonably priced. The idea is not so much to make money because we do get funding for this. We do want to make sure that people really value it. The pricing is done in a very friendly manner, but at the same time, we do want to encourage people to get something out of it and to be invested in the whole artistic process.”

The Melharmony Foundation hopes that things will return to normalcy in 2022.

“As soon as the pandemic is under control, we will hold the Melharmony Festival in person,” Ravikiran said. “Hopefully we have our fingers crossed that we can continue to have it live this upcoming November.”

A normalized world would be a sweet melody to anyone’s ears.