Guest jazz players fire first night of Jak Jazz '95

Guest jazz players fire first night of Jak Jazz '95

By Johannes Simbolon

JAKARTA (JP): It rained, but thanks to the top performance of guest musicians, the first night of Jak Jazz '95 was a delight.

The organizers provided a lot of space for local jazz musicians in an effort to bring more Indonesian color to the country's biggest and proudest musical event. But, it is the foreign musicians who continue to grab visitors' attention.

Among the local performers who managed an impressive performance was the Dwiki Dharmawan Orchestra which played with Novi Budianto's gamelan orchestra, Kyai Kanjeng Orchestra.

Dwiki was the only local team given the honor of playing on the JVC main stage and simultaneously marked the opening of the four-day festival. The group played two standards and four numbers by Novi which are rich with ethnic rhythms.

Dwiki and Novi obviously strived to fulfill the festival's grand ambition of marrying jazz with Indonesian ethnic music to create Indonesian jazz.

"We want to show that even the melodies of Miles Davis can be played with gamelan instruments," group leader Dwiki said after their performance.

Once Dwiki and Novi left the stage, the show was dominated by guest jazz musicians.

Earl Klugh and his six-member group, who hit the JVC stage before midnight, gave a laudable performance. The group's one- hour gig got big applause from the 300 spectators who came from several towns in Java. When it began to drizzle, some in the audience took refuge in the numerous umbrella-equipped drink counters, but many loyally remained on their benches.

It was Klugh's first performance at the Jak Jazz forum but, like Caesar, he conquered. The pop-jazz group had it all: virtuosity, compactness, power and dazzle.

Klugh did not want to dominate the show with his guitar play. He generously allowed his partners to exhibit their own musical skills.

The group's percussionist, Lorenzo Brown, stunned spectators when he left his drums for center stage and masterly played various metal and wood drumsticks.

Rhythmical, strange sounds filled the air.

"It's like David Copperfield playing music," commented a young spectator who was excited at seeing how Brown deftly hid his collection of drumsticks in his trousers' pocket and picked them up one by one during the amazing drumstick solo.

The spectators shouted for an encore, but Klugh and his group simply left the stage, obviously to spare their other best numbers for the following nights.

Benko Dixieland Band from Budapest, Hungary, also played sweetly on the second-biggest Arena stage.

The band, led by Prof. Benko Sandor from the University of Technology of Budapest, once performed at the Executive Club in the Hilton ten years ago, but this was their first appearance at Jak Jazz.

With their Dixieland style, the eight-member band, including three professional engineers, succeeded in being completely different than the other groups.

The group doesn't bother with fashionable innovations or nationalizing jazz. Instead, they seek inspiration from the history of jazz, and they do it very well.

"There is also a Dixieland style developed in Europe. But, what we play is New Orleans's original style and we don't mix it with any styles, including Hungarian ethnic," said banjo player Nagy Jeno, who is also chief engineer at the CIB bank in Budapest.

A regular Jak Jazz performer, Jimsaku from Japan, headed by the duo Akira Jimbo and Tetsuo Sakurai, presented a full-beat show. They were accompanied that night by top Japanese saxophonist Takeshi Ito, who made a powerful debut.

Bassist Sakurai addressed his fans in Indonesian and also played some Indonesian folk songs.

Carol Kidd from the UK who played on the JVC stage, and the top Russian pianist Igor Brill and the New Generation (Igor's children) who performed on the Gazebo stage, also drew crowds.

This is Kidd's first Jak Jazz appearance, but pianist Brill performed at the first Jak Jazz festival in 1988.

With her distinctive voice Kidd sang a dozen songs, including Beatles' songs, with the accompaniment of a hand-picked 10-member group, who are mostly from Scotland.

Other performers included Indonesia-born violinist Luluk Purwanto, who now lives in the Netherlands; the Helsdingen Trio; the Sandy Evans Trio from Australia who teamed up with Indra Lesmana; the Bujana Trio from Indonesia; the Jeffrey Tahalele trio from Indonesia; the Emerald group from Indonesia; Embong Raharjo; Idang Rasyidi; Bubi Chen from Indonesia who paired up with Jeremy Monteiro from Singapore; the veteran pianist Nick Mamahit from Indonesia; French trumpeter Illouz; and Tan Deseng and his Sundanese-music group.

Deseng, who performed yesterday evening, could not hide his disappointment with the technical problems faced by his group.

"We didn't have time to make a sound check. When we started to play we realized the sound system was flawed," he said before returning home to Bandung.