Someone to watch over me

The Kaya Quintet at The BFlat Bar, Bangalore

Anand Kumar Anand Kumar Anand Kumar Anand Kumar Anand Kumar Anand Kumar

When I stepped into BFlat on 25^th Feb 2012, I was sure that I was in for a musical treat. Arati Rao Shetty’s The Kaya Quintet was performing that evening, and like previous occasions, she had invited some immensely talented musicians to accompany her. This time, she had along with her Aman Mahajan on Keys, Keith Peters on Bass, Arjun Chandran on Guitars and Amit Mirchandani on drums.

B Flat is famous for hosting some of the best acts in the country; the place was spacious, the dim lights were beautiful and the waiters were very friendly. I arrived at this lovely place half an hour before the band started with its performance. Eventually, more people started coming in and the band, sans Arati, took to the stage.

Arjun started fiddling with his guitar and came up with some melodious licks and soon Aman joined in with some beautiful jazz chords, wonderfully complementing the guitar. The drums kicked in soon and Amit, who was using mallets, displayed some clever use of cymbals. Keith, having finished tuning his bass, then joined in with some solid walking bass lines thus initiating a structured, 3-song-long jam session. The last song in the jam session consisted of an interesting display of the “trading fours” technique in which the musicians alternated brief four-bar sections with the drummer.

The first thing that one would notice about B Flat is the marvellous sound. Even though on that particular day, the balance was a tad off (the bass seemed to be overpowering the guitars and keys), the overall sound was reasonably good. Secondly, one would observe the dexterity of the musicians performing. Aman Mahajan, who has a degree in music from the Berklee College of Music, Boston, was equally good with both his hands. The last time I had seen him perform with the Gerard Machado Network, he was performing the low-end duties with his left hand while playing pleasant chords and harmonies with his right. Amit Mirchindani is an amazing drummer and I think his drum solos were very intelligently arranged and executed. Arjun Chandran has a very interesting style, and he often peppers his solos with beautiful staccato style licks and has a vast repertoire of chords which gelled with the instrumental solo sections. Keith Peters needs no introduction. A.R Rahman has not recorded with any bass player other than Keith Peters after 1992, when he first jammed with him. However, I was a little disappointed that Keith did not play his funk style slap pop bass solos as he did the last time I had seen him performing with Amit Heri.

The fourth song (and the first with Arati) was ‘All Or Nothing At All’. This song was composed by Arthur Altman in 1939. I really liked Arati’s powerful vocals and the song seemed eerily haunting yet immensely captivating to me. I’ve been humming this tune ever since I heard it at B Flat.

After this, the crowd was treated to a series of covers of famous jazz numbers such as ‘A Night in Tunisia’ by Dizzy Gillespie and ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ by Richard Rogers. An interesting point about Arati’s singing style is that she takes vocal solos in between verses, humming out tunes, a style which vaguely reminds one of Chick Corea. The bass lines in the track ‘Song For My Father’ by Horace Silver, contained a lot of double stops and slides which wonderfully complemented Aman’s solos.

The band then played the 1941 Gene de Paul composition, ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’, a sad and dramatic song, ending it with a tasteful guitar solo. The song that followed, ‘Rio de Janeiro Blue’ by Randy Crawford, was a peppy upbeat number. I feel the band was impeccably tight in this particular song and Keith’s bassline was irresistibly groovy. Next up was ‘Round Midnight’ by Thelonious Monk, a slow haunting number, performed by only Arati and Aman. The band then proceeded to perform ‘Tokyo Blues’ by Horace Silver followed by ‘At Last’, an Etta James cover. The song ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ was up next, the arrangement for which was done by Aman. The time was close to 11 p.m. and Arati and the gang brought the proceedings to an end by performing the catchy ‘Come On In My Kitchen’ by Robert Johnson, ‘Speak Low’ by Kurt Weil and ‘Just One Of Those Things’ by Cole Porter.

The crowd seemed to absolutely love The Kaya Quintet which was quite evident when Arati asked everyone what the time was (at 10:45 p.m.) and the people seated promptly replied, “It’s just 9 p.m. Please continue playing!” I left BFlat at 11:15 p.m. with a happy feeling, humming to myself the tunes I had heard that night. On the whole, it was an incredible show that left me keenly looking forward to their next performance.

Anand Kumar

Anand Kumar plays bass guitar with a few Bangalore bands on and off. He is a coordinator with Songbound - a music outreach initiative that uses singing to reach out to Indias most impoverished children via collaborative projects with schools, choirs and professional musicians worldwide. His other interests include discovering new music on YouTube and computer programming.

Sunday Jazz Sessions at The Plantation House, Bangalore

Abhishek Prakash Abhishek Prakash Abhishek Prakash

The poster read – Jazz Sessions at The Plantation House, Leela Galleria. It seemed all normal to me – a jazz gig probably at one of The Leela Palace’s posh restaurants, perhaps with a garden! On reaching the venue, I went up and down the Galleria looking for my posh garden restaurant, until I saw Aman Mahajan and Arjun Chandran in a clothes store.

I assumed they were buying clothes, and found the idea of purchasing clothes ten minutes before a gig rather bizarre, but that was only until I saw the keyboard and the amplifier in the shop. Turns out the clothes store was in fact the Plantation House! The store is a lovely little space themed as a sort of old-Bangalore shop with vintage looking wooden walls, soft lighting and surprisingly good acoustics. It has a lot of free space and one corner of the shop was dedicated to the musicians.

I walked in, apprehensive and feeling a bit out of place. The musicians plugged in their instruments, and with the first note itself they slapped the apprehension right out of my system and out of the store. Suddenly, the whole thing seemed to fit right in place and make sense! Visitors came in and left as they pleased, a few stayed for most of the gig and some even shopped for clothes. And let me add that this in no way seemed like a business trick to attract customers. It was clear that the focus was on the music. As Shalini Subramanian, the owner of the store explained, this was her little underground venue for musicians to play without the clatter of glasses and plates.

The gig started with Aman Mahajan playing the piano intro of ‘Blue Monk’, a very easily recognizable jazz standard by Thelonious Monk. Arjun Chandran kicked in with the most beautiful guitar tone possible. It was the perfect jazz tone, soft but with just the right amount of zing to accentuate all the nuances of his picking. As they both played solos and complemented each other with delicious walking basslines, it was clear that these guys knew their jazz!

This was followed by a few famous jazz standards including ‘Someone to watch over me’, ‘Solar’ and a fast paced rendition of ‘Oleo’. ‘Straight, No chaser’ had a really free and beautiful intro from Aman that went into a very soulful solo. All the songs had extended improvisational sections and both musicians showed tremendous command and also depth of emotion in their playing. Arjun Chandran played the archetypal jazz guitarist for most of the time, but every now and then, one could hear some BB King or Muddy Waters slip out of his fingers.

Many of the songs were spontaneous jams, bearing names such as ‘Let’s play something nice and then build it up and see where it goes’. What was incredible to watch was that the jams had many key changes and intricate rhythms that they effortlessly communicated with each other. There was great chemistry between the two which made listening to them all the more exciting. Their rendition of ‘Autumn Leaves’ was so filled with emotion that even the clothes seemed to be swaying to their sounds!

Apart from the music, I found the Plantation House to be a great venue for the quieter gigs. Though the gig was intended to be informal, it would be nice to see gigs here with more structured setlists that would make people linger around longer. But, overall, it was a good gig and an innovative idea that has the potential to turn into a popular concept for a gig in the Bangalore live music scene!