Jazz is not new to Bandra. The queen of the suburbs has witnessed musicians — legends and amateurs — in the genre perform. It will see one more return to the neighbourhood this week, but with a difference. Ghatam maestro Vikku Vinayakram and TM Krishna’s concert at St Andrew’s auditorium this Friday takes its title from Dave Brubeck’s famed standard, Take Five, and hopes to explore the form of Carnatic music just as Brubeck’s quartet did with their jazz standard.

“We are simply five performers on stage together,” says Krishna, laughing away the complex connections this writer has built up. “But there is a comparison to be made. Usually, in Carnatic music, the vocalist leads while the percussion is an accompaniment. With Vikku mama [Vinayakram] and myself, there will be times when his percussion will take over. There is a certain inversion in the role,” he admits. While there is the tradition of the thaniyavarthanam — a phase created specifically for percussion solos, Krishna points out, “It is a solo, and not a space where the melody participates. In that sense, this [the concert] is a novel experience and something we need more of in the Indian classical domain,” Krishna remarks.