Tilanka Jayamanne

Love affair with a flute

Angu Rajendran

He is back with a bang. Or rather, he is back with his melodious flute. At twenty two years Tilanka Jayamanne is one of our country’s leading flautists. He won a musical scholarship to the University of Warwick, rated one of the most active student oriented music centres in UK. Tilanka is currently studying law. He is exuberant and hyperactive. He cannot sit still for too long but when he holds his flute to his mouth he is transformed into a demi-God. He produces the most divinely melodious music in the world.

Like the Hindu God Krishna, the world’s oldest known flautist, Tilanka is young and vibrant. According to Tilanka, just because you are young, you must not think that you have to dislike traditional music. “Of course I love the modern music – pop, hip-hop, rock, jazz but I think classical music is important for understanding and appreciating music,” says Tilanka.

“I love Mozart’s flute concertos best of all.” Tilanka loves to perform to an audience. As he says ‘Can you see I cannot sit still? So even when I perform I love to move about on the stage. Thilanka’s biggest fan is his mom who actually started him off on the flute for medical reasons. He was asthmatic as a child and the doctor ordered him to either take up swimming or playing a wind instrument to strengthen his lung capacity.

He did both. He swam for his alma mater – St Joseph’s but his marriage with the flute still continues. “My flute is my greatest passion,” he says. He formed a band with a couple of his friends when he was fifteen and they played at the Talent Search contest at St Joseph’s. Tilanka on the flute and a friend on the drums and another on guitar. “That is my most memorable and heady experience of all,” says Tilanka.

The audience swayed and danced as we played – Fools Rush In, La Bamba and heaps of Bailas. And that is why we came runners up.” They got so caught up with the audience that they could not stop in the time given. “And yet it was worth it all. I love to make the audience feel good. In fact I just love an audience and I love to perform. And my flute... It is my voice. It is the lead singer – it can accompany or be the melody. That is what is wonderful about the flute. It has a voice of its own. And boy is it versatile! You can play Eastern, Western, even Australian music with the flute.

Tilanka is extremely grateful to his first teacher the late Sita De Saram and his current teacher – Ms Surekha Amarasinghe. That I have stuck to the flute for almost eleven years now, despite all that new music out there is because of my teacher. She taught me to improvise and enjoy new music along with the classical,’ he says.

Tilanka is well grounded in classical music and has obtained distinctions for the LTCL and Dip ABRSM exams and won first place in Sri Lanka at both these exams for Flute Music Performance. He was also the winner of the Wind Category Award at the Concerto Competition 2004 of SOSL and held his debut recital on the flute at the age of 15.

A big fan of flautist Greg Pattillo who plays the flute while beat boxing, Tilanka says ‘Greg Pattilo is so cool. I wish I could be like him.’ Currently he is practicing for a performance at a banquet accompanied by his favourite piano teacher Ramya De Liviera Perera.

‘Whenever I have to perform I practice extra hours else it is not practice but for pleasure that I play.’

If music makes the world go round, then Tilanka should play on and on and on.