STANLEY PINTO: songs they dont sing anymore

Stanley Pinto couldn't make it to his "Songs They Don't Sing Anymore" gig at Opus last Saturday night. So he sent his pet chimpanzee to stand in for him. And you know what, it didn't make a damn bit of difference because the chimp sang songs nobody wants to listen to anymore.

MEGHA: God’s In His Heaven.

What a magical night’s music! The group called Megha, featuring Dr Suma Sudhindra on the veena and Gerard Machado on guitar fronting a band of eight who fused Indian classical music and jazz, left a Standing Room Only audience at Opus breathless with wonder at the beauty of their work.

Certainly, I haven't experienced anything quite as fascinating, involving, uplifting as the music and the professional skills on display.

Six decades ago, an Anglo-Indian violinist came out of the slums of Calcutta’s docklands and made his way to London’s renowned Trinity College on a music scholarship. His name was John Mayer and in time he went on to become one of the best-known resident composers of the London Symphony Orchestra. But the music that Johnny listened to in his head and his heart was rooted in Indian classical traditions. So, at the height of his influence in the mid-60s, along with a West Indian alto saxophonist called Joe Harriott, he formed what was surely the world’s first fusion band. Charles Fox, a respected British writer on jazz, had this to say about the Indo-Jazz Double Quartet:

“Nothing does the art of a nation so much good as letting foreigners in. In the 1960s … musicians of all kinds became properly aware of Oriental music, especially Indian. As well as using a raga instead of a harmonic sequence, Indian music …exploits rhythms more complex than Westerners are used to. Indo-Jazz Fusions, a double quartet, went in for face-to-face confrontation, with Indian and jazz musicians playing alongside one another.”

Johnny’s double quartet made several recordings over a few years and I was privileged to attend one of them over three days in London. Those memories flooded my mind yesterday at Opus and I thought to myself that the spirit of my friend John Mayer, who was killed in a hit and run accident outside his London home last year, must surely have hovered over us as we enjoyed Megha’s music.

I am not specially knowledgeable in Indian classical music but one needed little specialised knowledge to appreciate the wonderful Suma Sudhindra and her accompanists Sri. B.C Manjunath on mridangam, M.A. Krishnamurthy on tabla, B.K. Chandramouli kanjira and konekol and S. N. Narayanamurthy on ghatam.
The shy, self-effacing Gerard Machado has long been a stalwart of Bangalore’s near non-existent jazz scene. His trio, featuring nephew Tillu on drums and KN Prakash on 5-string bass guitar, were a joy to watch and listen to. But when these two discrete elements came together, they produced a whole that was so many multiples of its parts. Each song was a delight. For me at least, it provided the perfect justification, if one was indeed necessary, for an Indo-Jazz fusion so hopelessly in disarray after the imbecilic offerings of the Anoushka Shankar group just a few weeks ago.

This Suma-Gerard agglomeration is a group hugely deserving of a wider audience, beyond Bangalore and beyond India. Twenty-five years ago, I was privileged to push the wonderful Carnatic singer Ramamani onstage at the jazz festival I helped run in Calcutta, to join the young Louis Banks Quintet and their singer Pam Crain in a spontaneous scat session. It brought the house down. It also launched that particular aspect of Rama’s (and her ghatam playing husband Mani’s) forays into fusion music that has taken them to many celebrated performances at jazz festivals in Europe and the USA – and also a few months ago in Bangalore, at Opus, with their friend the internationally-celebrated alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano.

It would be a cruelly unfair world if the same recognition didn’t happen to Suma Sudhindra and Gerard Machado.

But for now, certainly last night, God was in his heaven and all was very well with the world.

the Maria Peterson - Stefan Pontinen performance

A MISHMASH OF A MISMATCH
Stanley Pinto on the Maria Peterson - Stefan Pontinen performance
_____________________________________________________

The East Meets West concert presented by the Bangalore School of Music at Opus last week did Jazz, already an endangered music form, no favours.

Ms Peterson, with a charming voice and stage presence, showed every indication of being a proficient singer of ballads. But no singer, however great, can deliver the goods without the appropriate accompaniment. And a violin, even in the hands of a Menuhin, is anything but appropriate to the task.

First, the violin is a soloist instrument, not one that can provide the accompaniment against which to showcase a singer. That would require a piano or a guitar or any instrument that provides the choral background that a voice requires. The most charitable explanation for BSM’s bizarre decision to pair the two is ignorance of this fundamental, even though its director is herself a singer of several decades’ standing.

Equally important, at the end of two hours, it was impossible to tell what genre of music Pontinen is comfortable in, let alone proficient at. Certainly not jazz. I am reminded of the legendary conductor Toscanini once asking a lady cellist of his symphony orchestra why, despite having one the world’s most wonderful instrument between her legs, all she could do was scratch at it.

Mr Pontinen scratched and scraped all through the evening’s presentation, in a futile attempt to provide the singer with the platform she needed to take off. And his few attempts to accompany her on the piano were offensive to an audience that certainly was sophisticated enough to know that he was way way out of his depth on that instrument.

The difference was graphically demonstrated when a pianist in the audience (uncharacteristic modesty prevents me from identifying him – in any event who he was isn’t relevant to the point I am making) went onstage to accompany Ms Peterson in her last song of the evening, a Spiritual that brought her and the audience alive for the one and only time during her performance.

The saving grace of the evening was provided by the excellent electric bass and tabla players.

It was a sell-out evening with more people packed into the wonderful Opus than I have ever seen before. But what a cop-out the evening’s featured performance was.

anoushka's rise ??!??

I went to a concert by Anoushka Shankar a few evenings ago. It was a much hyped event, and the tickets, priced unusually high, were sold out within hours of the first day.
I’d like to share my thoughts on it with you.
It was reported as a concert featuring Ms Shankar’s Grammy-nominated album RISE. I hadn’t heard it, nor any of her other work, so didn’t know what to expect. Naively, I thought her work might resonate of her father’s.
Well.
The show started a half-four late. We were told the “star” wanted to start at a particular time. Astrology? Tarot cards? I only know it irritated me as I had taken the trouble to get there (at the far end of Bangalore) well on time, as always.
The musicians trooped onstage. A Japanese tanpura player, a Bengali tabalchi, a flautist. Also a Spaniard who was reported as playing the piano in the traditional flamenco style (not a genre I had ever heard of before), a Tambourine man and a Jazz Bass player from Delhi. That collection of srange bedfellows put me on alert immediately. Wd the result be fish or fowl - or a hybrid of the two?
When Ms Shankar arrived, she was surprisingly thin and very gauche. Her opening comments - as untutored as any amateur local performer - encouraged the impression that no one had trained her in stagecraft. They were as ‘cute’ as any I’ve heard from amateur local performers, and cute is not what one expects of internationally-celebrated stars.
The music? Sweet, but going nowhere. Little direction, easy melodies that were less than a single step removed from standard muzak. One was called “Naked”. I suppose you need all the help you can get, including from the song title, when what you are putting on display is about as meaningful as a Parish Talent Contest. The Spanish piano player was Richard Clayderman without the flowing tresses. Flamenco musicians must be impaling themselves on the nearest bull’s horns all over Spain.
That said, there were a few standout moments. A woman singer trained in the North Indian Classical genre was fantastic. And the Japanese fellow on the Tanpura, easily the prettiest thing onstage, had all the po-faced serenity of a samurai’s mistress.
I had a stifling cold and fever, so wasn’t in the most convivial mood. The operators of the Hall had decided not to use the air-conditioning, so pretty soon I was feeling the effects of the Carbon Dioxide swirling about me. Some people, in the traditional Indian style, arrived 15-30 minutes AFTER the performance started. A few, including an old fart seated behind me, left their mobiles on, so they obligingly rang a few times. A half-hour into the concert, I decided I’d heard enough. On the way out, I suggested to the old boy with the mobile that he might wish to keep it out of reach and hearing in his nethermost orifice. He wasn’t amused but the folk around him applauded.
On the long drive home, I listened on my car CD to a recording of Ravi Shankar in a concert with the London Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn conducting. The Apple has indeed fallen pretty far away from the Tree.
Perhaps Ms Shankar has some knowledge of the music she performs. But she certainly lacked the Imagination to make magic with it, and, as Albert Einstein said . Imagination is more important than Knowledge.

Stanley Pinto

avril quadros at opus : review

I have heard about this singer called Avril but knew nothing about her music. So when last week Carlton sent me his irresistible message about Avril's performing at Opus, I was among the first to check in.
My impressions:
1. Avril has a terrific stage presence. That halo of auburn hair in its ordered disorderliness had me reaching for my BP pills. Not since I sat in the front row of a Diana Krall performance in Paris has hair affected me so joyfully. Add to that the well-designed clothes and her body language - nothing short of professional. Too many Bangalore performers, including those that are idolised by the young cognoscenti, look like they stepped out of a mud bath six weeks ago. Weak and gauche when it comes to stage presence. What they have to say is too often banal and how they say it too teeny-bopperish.
2. But the music was simply too overindulgent. Original songs without character, lyrics (when they cd be heard above the unfortunate sound mix) that thought rather too well of themselves for reasons that I cd find little justification for. The few covers of international hits on offer were well received - but I didn't know what to make of them. This may be rooted in my own limited knowledge of what passes for Hits these days, but I have often enough enjoyed hit songs that I didn't know when they were delivered attractively, to know that these weren't.
3. Hindi songs??? I guess there is money in them thar Bollywood hills but I didn't respect Usha Uthup or Sharon Prabhakar when they jumped on that unfamiliar bandwagon, and that neither have made any inroads into the million-sellers of that genre tells me you are either what it's about or you're not. Good luck to Avril. And if you actually have to explain, in lurid detail, to an audience that is hysterically applauding every word you sing that in the next song the foetus will be crying out to Mama on the abortion table, well ... either they don't know Hindi or you don't expect to sing it comprehensibly, and what the hell is the point?
4. The biggest downer? ALL the songs were delivered at Loud, Louder, Loudest levels. In fact Scream, Screamier, Screamiest. At a time when every pop singer and her aunty is discovering classic standards and ballads and recording them, it wd have been a relief to discover that Avril knows the value of a beautiful ballad sung gently into the night. If she does, she kept it a closely-guarded secret that evening.
To sum it up, a singer with the potential to be very good, if only she'd tweak her songbook to include songs that wd showcase her talent beyond her lung-power.
Stanley Pinto

PS And wd someone tell the sound-engineers at Opus that the star is the singer, the rest are her accompanists, and the ideal balance between the sonic output of the two shd be 100-70, not 100-100 or, as is often the case, a terrifying 100-120. Hmmmph.