Indian Musicians, Asian Artists Star At Quad Festival

Four Indian musicians, sitting crosslegged and stocking-footed on an oriental rug in Paine Hall, yesterday presented a program as part of the Quadrangle Spring Arts Festival.

Tanjore Viswanathan, an internationally known Indian flutist, and ethnomusicologist, told an audience of approximately 50 people that South Indian flute music "requires a lot of concentration."

"We conceive on the melodic plane, and melodically we live in a different plane together--it is like a meditation," explained K.S. Subramaniam, one of the performers who plays the vina, a large lute that sits on the floor.

Rulan C. Pian '50, master of South House and the main organizer of this first festival, said yesterday that the South Indian flute lecture-demonstration attracted a larger crowd than any of the festival's events to date. The festival began Thursday with a program of Chinese dancing.

Other events in the four-day festival will include Korean dancing and a performance by the New Cambridge Morris Men on the Quadrangle Saturday afternoon, as well as a concert by the Balinese Gamelan orchestra on Sunday at 3:30.