Recently I came across two old DD videos of the famous GATT Quintet in Youtube in Dr.Santhosham’s channel. A medley of Simon and Garfunkel songs and Country roads by John Denver. They can be seen here.
They brought back nostalgic memories of my childhood. I was in my 9th standard when I got a cassette of the GATT Quintet. I was hooked to male voice music from that time on. I still remember the deep bass voice of Dr. Grubb in Go Down Moses and the peppy Step into the water numbers from that cassette. They had the misfortune of singing in a period when the recording technology was in its evolution stage. Still you can hear the quality dripping from the songs. Their last CD GATT Together for Christmas is a superb collection of Christmas songs starting from the spirited “When was Jesus born” to the oriental “We three Kings” to the Tamil song “Senthamil Nadaenum Pothinilae”. The songs can be previewed here.
A brief note about the group
The members of the group are Dr Kalyan Subramanian, James Davids,Allan Sathyadev,Dr.Ravi Santhosham and Dr Samuel Grubb. They have been singing unchanged for the last 40 years.
It was their mutual love for music and a strong passion for african-american spirituals that brought four teenagers together more than forty years ago in the youth fellowship of the Emmanuel Methodist church in the southern city of Chennai, India. By the mid-seventies the young men graduated from college and embarked on separate career paths. two became physicians, one an account executive and one an aerospace engineer, who now lives in San Diego, USA, and whose absence brought a fifth member, also a physician, into the group. the GATT quartet thus became the GATT Quintet
Even though they are now separated physically, they are still held together by their love for music and the bond that they share with each other. Successes in their chosen career paths have made them pursue music for the sheer love of it and this shows in their performance.
They have performed in England, in N.Ireland, in USA, in Australia with the world voices in connection with the Sidney Olympics at the Sydney Opera House, in Bahrain.In 2009, the GATT Quintet performed as an alumni member at the 25th anniversary of the International church music festival in the Vatican, under the direction of Sir David Wilcocks.
Privileged to hear them sing Since I was brought up in the Emmanuel Methodist Church, Chennai, and still being in contact with the Group.
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