Tag Archives: Miles Davis

Leslie Charles Trio at The Rooftop Grill Bar, Bangalore

Braving the onslaught that is Bangalore traffic on a Friday evening and the dustbowl that is Kasavanahalli, I arrived at the lovely stone building that housed the Rooftop Grill Bar. Thinking that I had minutes before the event started (the time mentioned on the poster was 8:00 p.m.), I rushed in to see that, much to my relief, the time had been changed to 8:30 p.m. Although the location was not very well known and this was the first time that the Leslie Charles Trio was playing together, I was itching to hear them live. The venue had a great view, two very friendly owners and the perfect atmosphere for a great evening of smooth jazz and bebop.Â At first, the venue seemed to be sparsely populated but slowly people started pouring in, forming an intimate and cozy atmosphere.

The buzz and anxiety intensified as the clock struck nine and the soundcheck still hadn’t ended. I must mention here that this may turn out to be more of a log of the evening and not a review as one must be at the same caliber as these three vastly talented musicians to even attempt a review. Although this was their first gig together, the members of the band are individually, stars in the burgeoning jazz scene of Bangalore. On the bass guitar was Leslie Charles, teacher at the The Nathaniel School of Music and ex-bassist for Allegro Fudge. Ramanan Chandramouli, currently an instructor at the TAAQademy and member of Mad Orange Fireworks and Blind Image, was on lead guitars. To complete this trifecta, Deepak Raghu took his place as the drummer who is famously associated with Bevar Sea and many other acts. There was no doubt that the evening was going to be magical.

After imbibing some liquid courage and having undergone a quick wardrobe change, (for a very dapper Ramanan!) the band opened the set with Billy Cobham’s ‘Stratus’. They set the right groovy mood with the thumping bass of this slower, more minimalistic version. Many in the crowd were familiar to the band members and, though not raucous, indulged in gentle heckling and ribbing especially of Ramanan who was asked to “play better” after they finished their second song ‘Oasis’. Next they tackled the great Thelonious Monk’s jazz standard ‘Blue Monk’. Again, they went for a more restrained interpretation without straying from the original groove and chutzpah. Each song was done justice with the brilliant acoustics of the venue without anyone having to cup their ears to hear well or having their eardrums blown out.

The band moved on to the legendary Miles Davis track ‘Footprints’ so effortlessly showing us exactly why we should watch out for them. Shrugging off the continued comments from the crowd about their attire, especially a certain sporting hat, the boys next played ‘Led Boots’. The slow melodic overture dominated by the lead guitar, bass dominated interlude and the solo drum section got the crowd going with many of them crowding around the stage and dancing to music. Just when we anticipated that the song would end in a glorious frenzy of the drums the guitars kicked in continuing this wonderful rendition of the song.

After a slight adjustment to the gear, the band went on to another Miles Davis classic ‘All Blues’. The funky intro urged many out of their seats and many people stood near the band appreciatively bobbing their heads and smiling at intricate rhythms flying off the guitars effortlessly.

The second half of the gig commenced with ‘Blackout’ followed by the seminal jazz piece ‘Autumn Leaves’. It is a testament to their talent that they could provide such an unforgettable version on this piece with just three instruments. To emphasize that the evening was mainly a Miles Davis tribute, the trio followed with ‘So What’ and ‘Blue in Green’. The slow beat, alternating tempo, hypnotizing riff and slow fade out on the former song resulted in one audience member lustily yelling out “Oh Yeah!”

Keyboard maestro Bharath Kumar joined them next on the track ‘Recorda- me’ by Joe Henderson who let loose with some frenzied and fantastic playing. The now energized crowd applauding madly at the jubilant band was rewarded handsomely with the next track ‘Chicken’ made famous by Jaco Pastorius. This upbeat and cheerful number lent an appropriately vibrant flavor to the now smoke filled and hazy bar. With ‘My Favourite Things’, they moved on to a sadder, mellower strain as they got ready to bid adieu to the crowd. Bharath took a break from this track and Ramanan’s slow coaxing of the guitar was the highlight of this song. Little did anyone realize that it was close to midnight! With the genial banter, lively interaction with the band members and smooth-as-whiskey jazz; no one wanted the evening to end.

Due to some persistent and effective persuasion from a fellow listener, the band decided to indulge us with a live jam session with Bharath Kumar returning on keyboards. A great guitar and keyboard duet ensued and the evening ended on a perfect note!

Leslie was stoicism personified throughout the gig while leaving us all awestruck at his talent. Deepak regaled up all with some great drum licks and coupled with their confidence and fantastic rapport with the crowd gifted us with a near perfect gig. Close to midnight, the fantastic gig ended only to be marred by someone asking the guitarist to play a Hindi song for them. Thankfully, and with admirable firmness, he refused. Although the gig started late and lasted well past closing time, I was just happy having the chance to be at the first gig by the Leslie Charles Trio. They invoked the demi-gods of jazz- such as Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, John Coltrane and the wonderful chemistry shared by the members left an indelible impression of a talented band that has so much to offer in the future.

Anusmita Datta

Anusmita Datta is an ardent day-dreamer, music lover, die-hard foodie and occasional writer. Her obsession with pandas is sometimes disturbing and she can be often found lusting after momos!

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Nation Station at Alila, Bangalore

I think I should have more faith in the jazz scene in Bangalore, because every time I go to a jazz gig feeling skeptical, I end up having my mind blown away. Relativity maybe, is the culprit. If you have low expectations from a gig and it turns out to be twice as amazing, your mind can’t help but be blown away. Nation Station is about three months old (maybe the primary reason for my skepticism) and was “born out of a need to reinterpret and reinvent the sound of jazz in the country today”, as their Facebook page reads.

I would have been less skeptical had I known the band members before the gig, because their line-up has some of the best musicians in Bangalore. On lead guitars was Ramanan Chandramouli, guitar instructor at TAAQademy. Wilbur Colaco was on clarinet and saxophone, who along with Ramanan shared the role of Miles Davis in this tribute gig. Wilson Kenneth was on bass guitar, who we know from Caesar’s Palace, MoonArra, Slow Down Clown and more. Bharath Kumar, also keyboardist of the Rex Rozario Quintet, played keyboards/piano. Deepak Raghu from Bevar Sea took on drum duties. Altogether, one power packed band, an evening full of time to chill (on the 5^th floor of a five star hotel), and a bunch of hopeful ears.

The gig started with the opening band Lateralus. They played a small set consisting of few originals and a cover of Creed’s ‘My Own Prison’. They sounded very post-grunge and Creed/Alter Bridge-like. The vocalist had a powerful voice but could have done with more emotion and variation. The band’s music was a mix of some cool grungy attitude, very easily improvable vocals, some clichéd and confused choruses and good tones. And now, we come back to relativity. The band may have made Nation Station’s first song seem out of the world. But, for a band that was playing their very first gig that night, with a couple of their members playing their first or second gig ever, I’d say with some more practice they could probably pull off something great.

Nation Station then took to the stage. They had a tough job on their hands, attempting to fill the gigantic shoes of Miles Davis. The fact that they were attempting a Miles Davis tribute gig itself gave them a bonus gold star in my book. I have to admit, all the sheet music on stands on the stage made them look like a pro jazz band even before they started playing. And I’m talking about sheet music not only on papers but also on iPads! Technology, I tell you.

The first song ‘All Blues’, a Miles standard, slapped everyone out of their chill-zone and seemed to say, “Bow down to us, little people!” Ramanan started out with a brilliant note to note solo that moved into his own improvisation over the piece. WIlbur played the clarinet for the song and the first half of the gig, but his volume was too low to hear his notes clearly. Unfortunately, he sounded like “that fast jazz stuff” for most of the gig because of the levels. Ramanan’s guitar playing did stand out throughout the performance, but that first solo especially was what made me throw my guitar out the window later that night.

Next up was quite a slowed down version of ‘Tutu’, followed by a slow and haunting ‘Flamenco Sketches’ that had some soft and really beautiful piano parts. After the three Miles Davis covers, the band slipped into Herbie Hancock’s ‘Chameleon’. Their rendition had much of the original groove and zing. This was another song where we knew there was a great clarinet going on but it couldn’t be heard too well because of the levels and the tone. Bharath played a very Hancock inspired (what I like to call) “space-jazz” solo followed by a very intense and impressive drum solo from Deepak that, I’m positive, spoke words and sang to us.

The band returned to Miles Davis with ‘Footprints’ that saw the clarinet leading for the first half, until Kenneth shocked everyone with a bass solo that had every cell in his body oozing out emotion, and a tone that did very well to convey those emotions to the audience. Wilbur took a break for the next song, a Robben Ford-style blues jam. The drumming in this one was interesting especially with the use of polyrhythms. And another astonishing thing in this song was that they did a live fade out, perfectly!

The band then played Sonny Rollins’ ‘Doxy’, followed by my personal favourite Miles number ‘So What’. It had a slightly different groove than the original, but was relatively flat and colourless by the high standards they had set until then. Billy Cobham’s ‘Red Baron’ saw them back in full power. The groove in this song was particularly interesting with the resolving bars in the theme creating a lot of tension with triplets/dotted notes. The groove was accompanied by a glorious organ solo from Bharath, again touching the realm of space-jazz.

They ended the gig with ‘Freddie Freeloader’, also one of my personal favourites and the third song that night from the legendary Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue. Ramanan and Wilbur (on saxophone now) ended the gig on a high note with a lot of Miles’ flair being present in that last song. The jam on the finale lasted for quite some time, but I didn’t mind as I was absorbing every note to replay in my head on the long ride back home. Miles Davis is one of the greatest jazz musicians that we have ever seen, and to get the audience as satisfied with the tribute to him as we were requires a lot of praise. Needless to say, I absolutely enjoyed the gig, and look forward to more from this supergroup.

Abhishek Prakash

Abhishek Prakash is a Bangalore based guitarist and is a third of local act Groove Chutney. He loves jazz, street food, Woody Allen movies and often pretends to be a writer.

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Sanjay Divecha Duet at the Bangalore Habba UB City, Bangalore.

Sharanya Nair Sharanya Nair

On a chilly evening in Bangalore, I looked forward to being dazzled by the promise of some good ol’ blues, with a little bit of that jazz thrown in! A tad delayed, for whatever reason, one of the main attractions of the night, composer and guitarist Sanjay Divecha, walked onstage with only his guitar for company. The significant lack of other musicians on stage only heightened my anticipation – I’d heard enough high praise about this musical great to know that he wouldn’t be a letdown.

Sanjay’s set at UB city was peppered with original compositions (one by Aman Mahajan as well) and classic blues pieces interpreted in his own style.

Beginning the set with the self-composed track ‘Africa‘, he set the mood for the rest of the evening. I’ve heard a full ensemble version of this track online (with flautist Carl Clements no less) but, somehow, the stripped down version of the song he presented at UB City just took my breath away.

Aman Mahajan – you’d probably recognize him as one-third of the trio that makes up electroacoustic outfit Schizophonic – joined Sanjay for the second song, ‘Rapaz de Bem’, completing the duet promised by the Habba. Accommodating the piano with ease – in fact, giving it precedence from the get go – the duo’s cover of a classic blues number was paced a tad faster than other versions.

The third track, ‘Nardis’ (Miles Davis and Bill Evans) was a delight; the deliberate slowing down to a pause mid track had me at the very edge of my seat at one point. The two instruments took turns with the spotlight and I loved how there was no fencing and that each was given its due.

Next up was the duo’s interpretation of Jimmy Smith’s ‘Back at the Chicken Shack’. A short post-gig interview had us in on the fact that the duo had only hours to practice before they were to go up, but the quality of the performance didn’t hint it at the slightest.

My favourite track of the night, ‘Refuge’, was composed by Aman and appeared to have marked Turkish/Eastern influences, though, during our conversation later, he denied any conscious tinkering in that direction. Either way, it was a beautiful meld of styles.

Jazz standard ‘Ladybird’ by Tadd Dameron was up next. As the name suggests, the track had a flighty tone to it, like the score to a semi-comedic routine – though I wouldn’t trivialize it any further with shady comparisons. To the layman, it appeared the perfect follow up to the slightly dark-edged ‘Refuge.’

Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘Wave’ was next and while it was almost as soothing as the original, the fact that it was only a duo playing it came through like an elephant in the room. A strings section on this would’ve perfected it; at the time, I was hungering for something as small as a cabasa/shaker to soften the delivery and given it that fuller sound. But that’s just me!

‘Thai blues’, one of Sanjay’s own compositions was next, followed by ‘St.Thomas’ a traditional nursery song from the Virgin Islands, adapted by Sonny Rollins into the Jazz version that is probably better known the world over. The last song ‘Spain’ wrapped up the set neatly; the duo took the slightly eclectic Chick Corea standard and refined it to all smooth transitions and managed to make it sound melancholic during some parts and peppy during others.

While it’s easy for certain people to forego listening intently to the sort of music that’s crudely classified as “ambience music”, Sanjay and Aman’s performance drew this member of the audience straight in.

Sharanya Nair

Sharanya is a 'writer' and an 'editor'. You know the type. She loves her music too much to share.

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Infusion at Alliance Francaise de Bangalore

Infusion: To incorporate a thought or process. Alliance Francaise was the place to be on Friday night if you felt like some smooth jazz. The lineup for the night was Frijo Francis on Piano, Dominic Yesudas on Bass and Victor Francis on the Drums. I had heard only the best reviews about the band and was looking forward to watching them live.

Since I arrived a bit late, (unfashionably) I walked right into the jazz standard ‘Summertime’. It started off with a funk drum beat leading right into the song motif headed by Frijo. The first thing that struck me was the actual ‘sound’ they had – the perfect feel for swinging jazz with the dynamic modulations. After a really crazy piano solo, they switched lanes to move into a jazz/swing beat and recovered the funk for the ending.

Up next was ‘Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise’, another classic. I have to mention that Dominic works with an acoustic upright bass. It’s a beast just to handle, but the man toys with it with majestic ease. He’s got those smooth bass lines that lay the groove down hard! If you’ve heard some Miles Davis or John Coltrane, you will know that the double bass has an identity of its own. Frijo dropped out on the piano; Victor kept to the hi-hats and let the bass solo lead the way.

The band didn’t really chat or converse with the crowd between songs, so the songs were flowing fast and thick. I assume the next track was an original; Dominic switched to the electric bass, and after a catchy intro, a neat little bridge section opened the canvas to a wild wicked frenzy with Frijo picking up his Yamaha Keytar. The man has fingers that move like precise metal type bars, leaving in its wake, hundreds of notes on the piano that pant out of breath in exhaustion.

Another original track followed, very edgy and dissonant. It brought on another mood to experiment with, which is pretty much how they function on stage – with not a rigid form but an experiment with varied styles, individual brilliance and synchronized hits. There is a bare structure that exists, a simple concept that is steadily built upon, played with, teased and made richer.

Victor Francis is Calmness and Peace personified -even in the midst of thunderous drum rolls and tricky beat syncopation. A true veteran of the beat, he is a pleasure to watch for learning the nuances of jazz drumming.

Up next, was a jazz staple out of which these guys seemed to make an awesome salad! Horn Sections weren’t necessary; Frijo simply turns them into trills on the higher register. A funky ‘Watermelon Man’ in a neat tight package. After a couple of cycles on the motif, we headed down into another Keytar frenzy. There were a lot of ‘Guitarist wank squeals’ on his Keytar and electro-synth tones that whipped up a storm onstage.

After a massive applause, the audience yelled out for an encore. The boys returned to stage with ‘Take 5′. All in all, the band leaves a lasting impression of a Jazz band that delivers a powerful show of innovative renditions and strong original material.

We caught up with Sandeep Mukherjee of the band after the show who gave us some insight into the creative process of the band. He said that the improvisations arise from the unmatchable chemistry they share as a band. He also added that it is when music passes from instrumentalist to instrumentalist that they add their twist to it and it turns out into something more interesting than what they begin with. Sandeep also mentioned plans to help musicians with establishing an Academy to teach the finer aspects of Jazz.

Fidel Dsouza

Fidel Dsouza is a Journalist/Editor at WTS

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