Our birthdays mark a chance for us to reflect on the impact we have on those around us. For veteran musician and composer Keerthi Pasquel, this is doubly so, with his recent announcement that he will be marking his 67th birthday with a solo music concert titled ‘Manamala Hendewa’.
‘Manamala Hendewa’ will likely be Keerthi’s most successful performance to date and will take place on 29 January 2023 at 6.45 p.m. at the Nelum Pokuna Performing Arts Theatre. The show’s music will be provided by a seasoned band led by Nalaka Saji Jayasinghe, with guest appearances from artists such as Chandralekha Perera, Nirosha Virajini, Samitha Mudunkotuwa, and Dammika Bandara for duets.
Speaking to The Sunday Morning Brunch, Keerthi shared that this was not the first time he had performed ‘Manamala Hendewa,’ with his first performance taking place in September 2019, also at Nelum Pokuna. The 2019 rendition of ‘Manamala Hendewa’ received critical acclaim and quickly sold out.
Now, nearly three years since his last solo concert, Keerthi is finally ready to perform his biggest-ever one-man show once again at the request of his fans, who have been without live entertainment for more than three years due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic downfall in the country.
“Every year on my birthday I like to do something special,” Keerthi explained of his decision to put on ‘Manamala Hendewa’ once more. “Most of the time I do it to expand my charity work and this concert is no different.”
Every time veteran performer Keerthi sets out to put on a show, he goes above and beyond, and ‘Manamala Hendewa’ is no exception. “It will be nearly three hours of singing, with 29 songs performed,” Keerthi shared. “The concert will have a very quiet, calm, and soothing effect to it. There will be no hard music. My style is different to that. I’m doing this concert for two reasons – because I want to perform some good music for my fans and also for my charity work.”
Numerous concerts featuring Keerthi, such as ‘Keerthi Acoustica,’ ‘Keerthi Unplugged,’ ‘Tribute to the Legends,’ and ‘Evolution of Music with Keerthi,’ were huge hits. As a result, Keerthi’s previous performance of ‘Manamala Hendewa’ in September 2019 was at full capacity and Keerthi shared that he was confident this new performance would receive the same enthusiasm.
Tickets for Manamala Hendewa are available for purchase on mytickets.lk
An unfailing commitment to philanthropy
The money raised at the ‘Manamala Hendewa’ will go toward a trust fund that will be used to help patients in need as well as to upgrade the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Apeksha Hospital by purchasing equipment and cancer drugs. It is also a follow-on from his birthday in 2021 when he took part in donating to the enhanced Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at the Apeksha Hospital.
On an invitation made by Dr. Prasad Abeysinghe, Help Circles (Guarantee) Limited, the foundation spearheaded by Keerthi together with a few other donors, helped upgrade the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit from a two-room facility to eight rooms.
The Bone Marrow Transplant Unit is the only stem cell transplant facility in the Government sector so far and the largest in the country. The expansion of the unit was undertaken to help minimise the long waiting lists and start allogeneic transplants in the foreseeable future.
Help Circles (Guarantee) Limited, under Keerthi’s guidance, has completed many other charitable projects including a donation drive for pomegranates (pomegranates are recommended by doctors around the world for cancer patients but are expensive and a luxury in Sri Lanka) and a partnership with the Education Ministry and zonal directors of aesthetic studies to donate violins to students in need all around Sri Lanka.
Help Circles also donated a much-needed HIPEC machine to the University Hospital of the Kotelawala Defence University. Sri Lanka had only one such machine to treat various abdominal cancers and this is the only machine available in Colombo at present.
In response to a rapid increase in Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in the early 1990s, Help Circles also launched the Handapanagala water purification project, an initiative to provide clean water to Sri Lankans susceptible to deadly kidney diseases (the leading cause of CKD is elevated levels of heavy metal, fluoride, and minerals [lead] in groundwater and low-income communities in the North Central and North Western Provinces are most susceptible to CKD caused by contaminated groundwater).