Not only in the Chinese mainland, around sixth of the world’s population celebrates the Chinese New Year. This year the celebration begins on 6th of February, marking the beginning of The Year of The Dog, Earth Dog to be exact. Chinese New Year is also called Lunar New Year since it is dated based on the Chinese lunar calendar, some called it Spring Festival because it comes in the springtime. Our partners for 4 years, the Braga CityWalk which is located at the historical Braga street in Bandung makes a special program to celebrate it and use “Flowerichious From East” as the name, running from February 4th until March 2, 2018. Variety of events are made within the program, including our jazz community event, the BRAGA JAZZ NIGHT.
This month the BRAGA JAZZ NIGHT has reached the 44th edition, and got a special theme “Shanghai Night Jazz”. The stage is decorated with lampoons, and the surroundings are made specifically for the mall-goers would feel like watching jazz live performances in Shanghai. We decided to suit the theme, but of course without leaving our main reason in making this regular event, that is to support the young musicians and keep pushing the regeneration process. Plus, we always wish to present the wide variety of jazz by inviting bands with unique concept and make jazz accesible to the society. By combining them all, we created the basic concept for this special edition.
Performing first was the students from an educational art institute in Bandung GITA BAWANA. This school intends to enhance the productivity of its students from the creativity sides by providing variety of classes including Music Course, Music Production, Traditional and Modern Dance Course and Modelling. This school is a blessing for us since through one of the teacher Zahar Mustilaq they have been kindly supporting us from last year with the instruments, particularly drum and keyboard. Without their support, it’d be impossible for us to keep this event running.
Gita Bawana sent its best students to represent its jazzy side. The owner Daniel Denzel was there too supporting them. Apparently, this institute has a lot of talented kids as the troops are big in size. Teachers YD Nafis (piano), Zahar Mustilaq (drum) and Luqman Hertanto (bass) took their position then called a little boy named Bintang to take the second keyboard. This set went sailing with a famous song from The Sound of Music, “My Favorite Things”. Bintang is still a little boy, but he didn’t look nervous at all to play with the teachers.
Next, Zahar called Anita and Kurnia Rizky Husar to join them. Anita is even younger than Bintang. She’s currently in the 2nd grade of the elementary school and has been learning in Gita Bawana for a year. Husar is a high school student. They took “Over the Rainbow”. Anita has a soft little girl voice but she can reach high notes while maintaining her pitch really well. As for Huzar, eventhough he’s still in his 3 months studying there, he could already play good jazz with guitar.
Novira replaced Husar on guitar and the mike moved to Agnes for a famous song in the early 80’s from Nikka Costa, “First Love”. Just like Husar, Novira gave a good round while Agnes did her best in front. Next, the vocal coach/teacher Mirna Nurmala joined her fellow teachers to sing one of Chrisye’s big hits “Kala Cinta Menggoda”. We already know Mirna is a good singer, starting with her part as the vocalist of Continuum and then at the turn of her process in solo career, we have featured her too a while ago. It’s just nice to see her again, this time as a teacher with Zahar, Luqman and Yopi.
All teachers left the stage, replaced by all students of Gita Bawana. They are Yehuda (drum), Carina (bass), Evelyn (keyboard), James (guitar) and three girls on vocal: Naomi, Ferren and Astrid. They took Bruno Mars’ famous song “That’s What I Like” as the last drop. It’s certainly great to see them having fun on stage and played just as cool as their mentors. While the musicians produced solid sound with their gears, the singers gave lovely vocal harmony with no flaw. Adorable but strong performance from them.
The young guns parade from a well-established art educational institute Gita Bawana gave a warm opening to this Special Chinese New Year Edition. The combination of students and teachers also shows how close they are, which makes us think that the learning process in this institute must be fun. These kids and teens are surely new to live performance like this. Perhaps this one is even their first, yet they don’t look nervous.They enjoyed every moment, which for us is far more important than making a gig a skill showcase.
In the end, music and performances should be able to entertain both the players and audience. And, it should connect both sides. Since they are still young, time is on their side. We won’t be surprise if one day some and hopefully all of them make waves in our music scene. We have collaborated with some music schools in Bandung that speak jazz loud, they are really good schools, it ‘s indeed a blessing for this city, the nation and jazz.
The next session marks the return of a multi-faceted band. Led by a pianist who has a strong jazz soul Widiyanto Sutanto, this band has actually climbed quite high in just 2 years. It’s the OUT OF 7.
The band was established in 2013 consisting of a group of friends who regularly served at a church in Bandung. Except Widiyanto Sutanto, the band has his wife Marissa Wiguna (drum), Herman Yulianto (guitar) and Abet Darmaji (bass). The band came alive not long after the leader Widiyanto advanced to the second round of an international jazz competition Soon after they got a vocalist Erick Gabe who also co-hosts this event since day one. With this formation they found their existance very well, from their first hatch in Klab Jazz’s event to the prestigious Red White Lounge in Jakarta to festivals such as Kampoeng Jazz, Espose and JakJazz. Sometimes they added another guitarist Daniel Christy or got a sub bassist Reinhard Woran.
They have made a couple of original songs, where one became their first single, “Kita Indonesia.” Ironically, when everything seemed to be on their side, the band suddenly went on ‘unusual’ hiatus. We say unusual, because occassionally they regrouped to make special appereances here and there. They haven’t appeared anywhere for around 2 years. Luckily when we offered the band leader to participate in this Chinese New Year edition, they agreed to resurface like the old days.
The solo drum from the only lady in the band quickly grabbed the attention of everyone. Marissa had comfortable time to have fun with the drum which turned out to be the opening of Dave Brubeck’s masterpiece, “Take Five”. Widiyanto followed his wife in developing magic with the keys. A lot of twists were found, showing how much they missed running loose on jazz stage with such joy. Herman and Abet did their part tight and enjoyed their moment when they got their turn. It was a sharp, quite surprising opening from them.
The Out of 7 then slowed down with a bossa classic from Jobim, “The Girl From Ipanema”. Instead of making it simple, they explored all the possibilities of making it interesting with improvisations. So eventhough it wasn’t as manic as the first one, this gem got quite a treat as well.
Realizing that this event was meant to be a special Chinese New Year edition, they played an ageless Mandarin song from the great Taiwanese singer, Teresa Teng titled “Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin” (in English: “The Moon Represents My Heart”). This very romantic song is still found in many weddings here in Indonesia as well as in the playlist of many people. It was a surprise to see them making a swing version of this. The sweet melody was very well kept, yet they made it as if it was a jazz song, thanks to the smart arrangement by Widiyanto.
Enough with the ballads and smooth tracks, they took a different road by serving funky jazz by covering Lee Ritenour’s “Rio Funk”. High dose of funk were poured in this one, as we saw some ladies swaying on the far right side of the stage. Plenty of goodies were captured in this one as they totally funked us out.
After all these pretty intense servings, they eventually came to the last one, taking on a masterpiece of John Coltrane which was found in his legendary studio album “Giant Steps”, “Mr. PC”. This song is tributing bass player Paul Chambers who was with him for many years and has been known as a major vehicle for jazz improvisation that every jazz musicians should be familiar with. Widiyanto and his fellows seems to know it as they kept the bone structure intact but let the even more ferocious improvisations flowing freely in its veins under pleasuring jamming spirit. All of them released everything they had inside on this one. The trading punches between Marissa and Abet was really captivating, and the way they did their solo runs gave compliment to the fun of jazz playing. It was a final blow that knocked us all out.
This band actually has the x-factor that makes their gig interesting. The no-ordinary arrangement, the blazing finger-dancing over the keys, the lethal young female drummer who deceives people with her cute look, blues-rock oriented guitarist and groovy bassist, put it together then you got the soul of Out of 7. We haven’t seen the band reformed again for two years, but we can see now they still actually have all their uniqueness which has took them fly up high. We always believe that this band is really solid as one team. Probably it wasn’t clearly seen before, but it surely is now. We could also feel how much they miss running wild on jazz stage and playing together. We do hope they won’t go hybernating again after this, because with what they have, they should be able to speak loud in the music scene.
For the last band we featured a band consisting of young musicians that takes a course not many dare to go anymore, the Prog Jazz. The band is named BLUE OCEAN PROJECT (BOP).
This band was born as the brainchild of a pianist rooted in jazz but never stop exploring, Ditra Prasista and drummer with different punches, Rio Abror. They began just by two, said to be inspired by the one and only Rudess Morgenstein Project before the band got bigger by having more players. First they became trio with Fuuji Kyra joined in 2015, then they got Leviana Puteri and Meita Yunita filled the vocal lines a year later. The vocal part moved to Kharisma Hakiki then to Didin Ginanjar. After that, the band added two more players: Dwi Fari on flute and Erwin Apriliadi on sax.
The Blue Ocean Project began in the format of four with Ditra, Abror, Fuuji and Didin, presenting their own version of a song by Tillery – a uniquely gifted trio of respected vocalists – written by its member Gretchen Parlato and Magnus Thompson-Marcelin titled “Magnus”. Right from this first choice we could clearly see that this band brings jazz in different atmosphere. Sharp, explorative yet friendly to even the non jazz listeners. Surely wasn’t easy, but they somehow know how to bring it naturally.
From there, the band pinned a song found in Robert Glasper’s 2005 album on Blue Note label, “Rise and Shine”. In this one the Blue Ocean Project decreased its size to just trio, but even so, they delivered even louder sound. Abror roared wild behind the drum, like a soldier shooting the machine gun with unlimited ammo and hit the target every time. This formation highlighted the second formation of BOP which would work perfectly had they continued on being a trio.
Enough with cover song, Ditra then announced that the last two songs would be their originals. Starting with “Delusion”, the founders Ditra and Abror showed the true core of BOP and how much colors their music pallette has. All members then gathered for one last tune titled “Lunar”. Starting with sparkling solo piano by Ditra, the rest of them started filling up the song until it became full rounded. For us this song is a masterpiece, a celebration of third stream in its finesse. The humming voice of Didin sprinkled more magic into this song, while the combination of flute and saxophone enhanced the sound significantly. For us, this song is a winner. Brilliantly composed, cleanly executed.
It’s important for us to bring in and support a band with different concept to show that Bandung and in general, Indonesia actually have wide diversity of jazz. Creative brains like Ditra and Abror are urgently needed if we want to see jazz being developed bigger and wider. The Blue Ocean Project is currently working on their first album using something quite ‘scary’ as the theme, Schyzophrenia. Interesting concept nicely done. We have been trying to invite this band since some months ago, finally we go them and plan to bring them back again, hopefully when they are promoting the album. If anyone ask, is prog jazz still exists today in Indonesia, now we can say: yes it is. In the hands of Blue Ocean Project, not only prog jazz would live on but also would get the chance to appear in a new face.
As we got the big 10 of Indonesian Idol Jr 2017 Akbar Herliansyah and his reliable partner Hudda, we gave them a shot before we sealed the event. They took Willie Nelson’s everlasting ballad “Crazy”. Once again Akbar let all his heart out in singing the song, something that for us become his forte. Both of Akbar and Hudda are still very young, so we do hope by encountering jazz early, they would have plenty of time to explore and find their own grip in it.
This edition for us is uniquely describes the heart of Braga Jazz Night. We always want to push and support the regeneration of young musicians by giving them a chance to perform since early age, we try to ‘wake’ the bands that we think is good but currently inactive, and showcasing the different form of jazz from creative brains. We thank every participating musicians for giving up their best. We will be back again next month with another set, we hope to still have your support as well as being able to meet your expectation of a variety and good quality of jazz. See you again in March!
Watch the highlights of Braga Jazz Night 44:
See more pictures:
Reporter and photographer: Riandy Kurniawan
Video Editor: Vierna Mariska Kurniawan .