PERFORMING ARTS

A.R. Rahman

Bollywood superstar composer A.R. Rahman and his 66 dancers, singers and musicians began their Patriot Center concert at 8 p.m. and were still receiving enthused screams three high-energy hours later. After Rahman wrapped up the performance at 11:20 p.m. Sunday, the crowd remained, and stayed pumped, until the confetti fell.

All ages and entire families from the Washington area's Indian community danced and sang along to more than 30 Rahman hits -- and they're all hits. The 41-year-old composer-singer- instrumentalist is one of the most important and popular artists in modern Indian music, mixing traditional sounds with hip-hop and dub-inflected electronica. He's a prolific genius who has scored more than 100 Bollywood films; in 2003 the BBC reported that he's sold more than 100 million albums, and there are estimates that he has moved twice that many cassettes.

Based on the ethnic makeup of the nearly sold-out Patriot Center audience, not many people outside those of Indian descent have a clue about Rahman, but that may change. He's slowly making inroads into the non-Indian populace, having collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the musical "Bombay Dreams," having scored "The Lord of the Rings" stage production and having his smash song "Chaiyya Chaiyya" open the Spike Lee film "Inside Man."

While the slamming "Chaiyya Chaiyya" received the evening's largest ovation -- and some of the audience's fiercest rump shaking -- it was just the 17th song in the set.

-- Christopher Porter

Alan Morrison

If you know the organ only through stolid chordal accompaniment of hymns, you may well wonder why Mozart deemed it "the king of instruments." One reason is the integration of a pipe organ with the building surrounding it -- each is part of the other. In a setting as glorious as Washington National Cathedral, a top-notch player such as Alan Morrison can elevate even a less-than-outstanding instrument to royalty.

Morrison, head of the organ department at the Curtis Institute, played 20th- and 21st-century works on Sunday. From France came Marcel Dupré's Prelude and Fugue in B, whose stop-start fugal theme built effectively, and Maurice Duruflé's "Scherzo," with ethereal figurations on the small pipes, and moods flickering from lightness to solemnity.

Harold Stover's 2003 suite, "Mountain Music," is distinctly American. Its quiet nocturne, comedic scherzo and final variations are based on Shaker melodies dating back as far as 1808. The central "Quick Dance" -- a hoedown, no less -- was especially attractive, as was the solemnly striding ground-bass underpinning the finale. Another American work, the brief "Folk Tune" by Percy Whitlock, featured alternating ghostly and forthright sections.

Folk music -- a Dutch song -- also underlies "Sonata Eroica" by Belgian composer Joseph Jongen. Here Morrison seemed literally to pull out all the stops in the overwhelming opening, reminiscent of Richard Strauss, with whom Jongen studied. The work is more tone poem than sonata, encompassing both quietude and high drama, and ending with distinctive trumpet calls.

The cathedral is planning to replace its adequate organ with two new ones -- good news for lovers of the kingly sound.

-- Mark J. Estren