UALR’s Indian Percussion Ensemble under the director of Rolf Groesbeck will perform chenda drumming compositions from Kerala, South India, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 22, at the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Building.

Undergraduate Mani Chidambaram of Little Rock will perform excerpts from two of the preliminaries to Kathakali, the Kerala dance drama that appeared in the Artspree series in September. Music major Johnathan Pennington, also of Little Rock, will perform the complete Tayampaka.

Tayampaka is a chenda – or drum – solo that takes place at Hindu, and sometimes Christian festivals.

Groesbeck said that Pennington’s performance may be the first time in the hundred-year-plus history of the genre that an American has played the complete Tayampaka on the chenda anywhere in the U.S.

“Johnathan has been working hard on this performance for the last year under my tutelage and hopes to play the entire 45-minute work from memory,” he said.

The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Groesbeck at 501-569-3101.