The Amyt Datta Project, an all-star unit, raised the jazz standard at the crossroads of ruggedness and refinement. The second band to take the stage at Phoenix MarketCity’s Courtyard on the first day of the festival last weekend, it nailed its balance perfectly when it played ‘Ironic Bironic’. Full of chromatic tension, the instrumental piece with Amyt Datta and Arinjoy Sarkar on the guitar, Akash Ganguly on the bass guitar and Dwaipayan Saha on the drums, turned the heat on with Datta’s rippling riffs.
Considered one of India’s foremost and innovative guitarists, Amyt Datta drew raucous cheers when he stepped on stage, with his dark shades glinting in the glare of the footlights, and thanked Edison Prithviraj of Exodus for organising the festival. Soloist and member of iconic bands such as Pinknoise, Shiva and Skinny Alley, Datta set the pace for the set with a pungent solo, Sarkar chasing close behind. Sarkar’s strident strumming and sharp staccato in ‘Remembrance’, and Ganguly and Saha’s accurate fusion in ‘Chase’ ended the debate on why the band from Kolkata is considered a seasoned hand in assorted territories of musical genres.
The credit for setting the tone for an enjoyable evening and drawing in some of the shoppers goes to the Shubhangi Joshi Collective from Mumbai, comprising the talented vocalist Shubhangi Joshi, Titus Pinto on bass and Aamir Ismail on the drums. Their bandstand alliance is relatively new — the collective is only a few months old, but good enough to have written its own creative shorthand.
The band, in its first gig in Chennai, played both covers and originals, opening with ‘Look At Her, She’ll Never Learn’. Its music has an air of mystery even when confined to the formal arrangements of old-world jazz. Shubhangi’s voice spirited people away to two continents as she sang Corinne Bailey Rae’s ‘Paris Nights and New York Mornings’ with the sass and sense of rhythm it demands. She followed it up with ‘Talking Away The Night’ from her debut album, the poignant ‘Done and Dusted’, and the verve-filled ‘Cynic On The List’, each song drawing coherent textures from the guitars and the drums. With a voice that scats beautifully and improvises to accommodate a range of chords, the self-taught Shubhangi Joshi can only be described as gifted.
The final set on stage was the Matteo Fraboni Trio, comprising drummer Matteo Fraboni from Italy, guitarist Stephen Neal Mcentee from Australia and trombonist Loic Sanlaville from France. The trio played familiar jazz standards, but with inflections as unique as a thumbprint in a series of instrumental songs. Sanlaville opened with an ethereal eddy of harmonious sounds that had a sleek melody to them. A delicate guitar solo with notes darting across the audience followed, interspersed with a strobe of drum beats rising to a crescendo. Gradually, the music leaned towards Fraboni’s sensibilities, who explored polyrhythms with ease and hyperkineticism.
The set was an ideal showcase of sounds from around the world that merged one balmy evening on a stage in Chennai.
