Music in their blood

Two musical prodigies that the community helped to launch in the late 1980s will be back in Bombay later this year. Farhad Billimoria, concertmaster of the Mitteldeutsche Kammerphilharmonie Schoenebeck near Berlin who has performed as violin soloist with various orchestras and chamber groups in Europe, has been invited to come and play with the Bombay Chamber Orchestra in November 2008. He is expected to perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto as well as give recitals on the piano and the violin at the NCPA (National Centre for the Performing Arts), his mother Anita informs us. So too his flautist sister Dilshad.

Farhad, who acquired his masters degree as a concert violinist in Vienna has been an award-winner who has performed in various parts of the world including South Africa, Cuba, the US and India. A sheaf of newspaper clippings — all in German (the only thing we can recognize is his name!) – attest to his popularity with the local music lovers. Some paragraphs have been translated. In one, theater critic Von Peter Beyer notes, "The solo violinist Farhad Billimoria demonstrated perfect and precise string sound. One wonders what brought (him) to us from India! What is he doing in Schoenebeck? Why isn’t the world getting the opportunity of hearing this virtuoso? Why is he not in Vienna, Milan or Philadelphia? But then we in Schoenebeck would lose out on having him with us. His tremendous virtuosity is the reason why the full hall gave him a standing ovation for several minutes.” In another clipping Von Renate Bojanowski writes about a performance when Billimoria conducted the ensemble: "The audience brought him back on stage several times while applauding his tremendous performance. It was an evening that was literally food for the soul which unfortunately you don’t find in our hectic everyday life.” Von Helmut Rohm was blown away by Billimoria’s rendition of Mozart’s Concerto in A Major: "This concerto is said to be technically and musically difficult. Kammerphilharmonie Schoenebeck has in its concertmaster an excellent violin soloist who presented this composition in a professional and brilliant manner… (He) averted (as always) superficial expressions and mannerisms. He is always very modest and only concerned completely in the music and his instrument…” Similar ecstatic reviews of other performances bear testimony to Billimoria’s musical prowess.

An Operetta CD has been released with Billimoria as leader of the Kammer­philharmonie which has been received favorably world wide.

L to R: Farhad, Julia and Christina Billimoria; Dilshad and Jason Posnock with Max

Farhad’s parents, Bomi and Anita, are understandably proud as he has carried their own talents further. The couple had met when they were studying the piano, doing two piano works together, Anita tells us. Both did their exams for the Royal College of Music, London as also London’s Trinity College of Music. Bomi, former vice president of Johnson & Johnson, stood first in India and in Asia, winning a gold medal at Trinity. Now, as trustee he helps manage the Bombay Chamber Orchestra that Jini Dinshaw founded 46 years ago and plays the timpani and percussion. Anita is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Company Secretaries, London, who gave up her career when Farhad was born. She now educates children in the Worli hutments area and teaches music at The Happy Home and School for the Blind and the New Model School.

Completing the quartet is flautist and daughter Dilshad who had completed the final grade (grade VIII) of the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music in 1990 and had obtained the highest distinction among all the Indian candidates that year. Parsiana recalls her performance along with other young aspiring musicians at the NCPA’s Little Theatre at an evening organized by the late Nariman Cursetji and his wife Jeroo in memory of their daughter Hilla. She earned a place at the Royal College of Music and studied under renowned flautist Christopher Hyde-Smith and completed her BMus at the institution when she was awarded a scholarship by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. A Westminster Abbey handout at the Commonwealth Day Observance where she had performed as a soloist in 1994 records her youthful career. After the performance she had been presented to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. Acquiring a master’s degree from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on the strength of a full scholarship awarded by the University, Dilshad became its music director before shifting to Brevard in North Carolina where she and her violinist husband Jason Posnock are on the faculty of the Brevard Festival that attracts well known international celebrities to perform and teach, says Bomi. Jason is concertmaster of the 80-member Ashville Symphony Orchestra. Dilshad has authored Great Flute Duos: From the orchestral repertoire on behalf of her mentor Jini Baxtresser who, till she retired, was principal flute of the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta. World famous flautist Sir James Galway has invited Dilshad to write a book for him as well, notes Anita.

Both children had the financial backing of the community trusts, the Bai Maneckbai Jeejeebhoy Trust, the J. N. Tata Endowment, and the R. D. Sethna Trust being the most prominent but not the only ones to help, as notes Bomi.

Will the music gene assert itself in the next generation? Farhad and his wife Christina — a professor of English and history at the the German Hochshule — have a two-year-old daughter Julia. Dilshad and Jason’s son Max Shavak (after Bomi’s dad of whom the child is very fond) is all of six months. We’ll have to wait awhile.