Live Accompaniment by Utsav Lal

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“I’ll never forget the first time I saw Shiraz,” raves Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, “and if you take a chance and take in this gorgeous silent extravaganza, a landmark of Indian cinema, you will surely feel the same.” An astonishing treasure of the silent cinema, Shiraz is one of three cinematic collaborations between pioneering star/producer Himanshu Rai and German-born director Franz Osten. Shot on location in India, Shiraz was restored by the British Film Institute from original elements some ninety years after its initial release. Ambitious and elegant, the film takes creative license with the story of the life and death of Mumtaz Mahal (Enakashi Rama Rao), the seventeenth-century Mughal empress whose early demise inspired her husband, Shiraz (Rai), to construct the Taj Mahal. Inventing a backstory involving bandits, enslavers, and nobility-in-disguise, Rai and Osten give us a robust romantic adventure filled with teeming crowd scenes and location shots that double as an invaluable documentary. Description courtesy of Juno Films. (Dir: Franz Osten, India/Germany, 1928, 105 min.) 
 
Steinway’s Young Artist of 2010, Utsav Lal made his debut at the age of eighteen with his rendition of Indian ragas on the piano, stunning the world with his innovative handling of Hindustani classical music on a Western instrument. Often referred to as the “Raga Pianist,” he has gained international recognition, performing everywhere from Ireland to Singapore, Germany to Kuwait, and beyond.