| Louis
Banks, Henry Lakatos, and Ensemble, Shisha
Café, December 26, 2007
Louis Banks was in town with son
Gino, and was accompanied by three others; Tony Lakatos, a saxophonist
from Frankfurt, a Puerto Rican bassist Mario Sossa, and singer Joe
Alvarez. The show started early thanks to restrictions on time,
and concluded by around 10.45 pm.
The house was full,
the conversations relatively subdued, and the amiable crowd paid
attention to the music.
It took some time for the musicians to find each other in the musical
sense, but it did take a lot of time.
The musicians were competent, dexterous, and consummate, but somehow
the music
refused to coalesce into an incandescent flame. The artistes played
jazz standards for the most part;
and it was when the instrumentalists jammed that the music coruscated
most.
Bebop Raga and Shanti were two such compositions by Louis Banks,
which had raga based scales and distinct melodies set to a lilting
rhythm.
Tony played the soprano saxophone on Shanti and came into his own
with his
sound all breathy wail and mercurial flight. Joe Alvarez was adequate
on vocals,
but his voice lacked body and did not really do the things he expected
of it.
Mario was agile on the double bass and his sound on Bebop Raga was
elicited using a bow,
a sound that enhanced the evocative quality of the melody.
Top notch musicians yes, but top-notch performance no. Maybe we
would have it the next time around. |
-
by Anand Sukumaran |
(
Click on a thumbnail to see the full sized picture )
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| Louiz
Banks - Keyboard |
Tony
Lakatos - Saxophone |
| Joe
Alvares - Vocals |
Gino
Banks - Drums |
| Mario
Sosa - Upright
Bass |
| Date
- 26 th December 2007 |
Venue
- Shisa Cafe, ABC Farms,
Koregaon Park, Pune. |
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