The current A R Rahman tour, which has already taken him and nine singers, including S P Balasubramaniam, Sonu Nigam, Udit Narayan and Shankar Mahadevan, to three cities, will reach several other cities, including Toronto in coming weeks.

Two years ago, Rahman used an orchestra of about 100 musicians and about 30 professional artistes who danced energetically to his music. There was tremendous appreciation for his efforts but many sponsors groaned that while the show attracted huge audiences, they could barely break even because of the forbidding costs.

This time, everything but the musical numbers had been cut down. Also cut down were the number of Tamil songs. Many people bitterly complained at the last concert that over 40 per cent of the songs were in Tamil. This time there were just about four Tamil songs out of 30 numbers. And they were received well.