Dilanjan Seneviratne Postpones Rendezvous After the Easter Sunday Attacks, Then Fills Hatch
A multi-artist Pettah Effect concert, set for 27 April 2019, staged on 22 June 2019 to a full house | Yohani's first concert in Sri Lanka
On Saturday 22 June 2019, Dilanjan Seneviratne's Pettah Effect staged Rendezvous at Hatch in Colombo to a full house, two months after the Easter Sunday attacks forced him to call the concert off its original date.
Rendezvous had been set for Saturday 27 April 2019, with Pettah Effect's artists sharing one bill. On 21 April, coordinated bombings of churches and hotels killed more than 260 people. The next day Dilanjan postponed the show, and Pettah Effect told its audience that a concert was a day of celebration and it did not seem right to celebrate while hundreds of innocent people had been killed or wounded.
A state of emergency followed, and event bookings across the country were postponed or cancelled. Dilanjan brought the show back in June, working within the restrictions of the time, while the emergency was still in force.
Pettah Effect billed it as four hours of music following two sold-out shows, the Open Mic nights of September 2018. Many Pettah Effect artists took the stage. Among them was Yohani, back from her studies in Australia, playing her first concert in Sri Lanka.
The format was Dilanjan's own. Highlights include:
Hand-picked artists: each brought three to five songs, performed in their own arrangements and without lyric sheets.
A live band: every artist rehearsed and performed with one.
Weekend studio sessions: rehearsals ran from Friday at 7pm to Sunday afternoon, around the artists' day jobs.
The business model: Pettah Effect funded the sessions, used the recordings to market the show, sold the tickets and brought sponsors in for the night.
The road to Rendezvous began that spring. On 30 March 2019, for Earth Hour, Pettah Effect presented an unplugged evening at the Trillium City Hotel with Yohani, Amarsha, Tharaka, Dewakie and Ashen, and a fresh call for live auditions followed for 20 April.
On the Rocks came next, in November 2019 at The Arena, Hotel Galadari, with the hotel and Red Bull as partners. Dilanjan keeps photographs of both nights in his archive.
