Ditched At The Bridge,سانوں نہر والے پل تے بلا کہ , By Sachal Jazz

Ditched At The Bridge
سانوں نہر والے پل تے بلا کہ
by Ted Nash

SACHAL JAZZ ENSEMBLE with Wynton Marsalis

A week later of attending Anoushka Shankar's concert, it was the performance of Sachal Jazz Ensemble at Lincoln Jazz Center, in Rose Theater at Columbus Circle.

The first time I heard of them was last December when Dave Brubeck died. I shared his Take Five with friends in his memory. An APPNA friend, Dr Naeem Siddiqi, send back the Sachal Jazz version of it.  It was an amazing mix. Later I found that the group has dared into multiple musical experiments.

Now they were here in town. They had two performances back to back, on November 22nd and 23rd, Friday and Saturday, house full. There is a good review by New York Times, but here is my take.

The emcee was Wynton Marsalis, the Music Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, sitting at the back with his trumpet. He did a good job of explaining the background and introduced every body. He appreciated Izzat Majeed's effort to chose Jazz as the medium of fusion, thus connecting classic Indian music with the wider audience worldwide.
 

The conductor was from Sachal, Nijat Ali. It is the first time that I saw someone conducting eastern music. A new concept! To me somehow it seems that the music flows on its own and the conductor is enjoying it, appreciating with the movements of his hands and head a lot more than actually directing it. Perhaps I do not know the ins and outs of music to make such an outlandish remark.

There were ten compositions. Five were basically Pakistani themes and the other five were Western. All of them had good mix of sounds, and some mixes were more seamless than others.

It started with Tere Ishq Nachaya by Wazir Afzal, and was very entertaining to listen to the trumpets and trombones with the tabla, sitar and bansuri.

Others included Ranjha Ranjha by Qadiur Shagan and Mahiway by Khurshid Anwar.

Among the Western compositions I knew included My Favorite Things. from the Sound of Music

 

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Take five was excellent to watch in real life. All the notes of the music played excellently by Indrajit Roy-Chowdhury, who was sit in for Hidayat Khan. Unfortunately later his sitar's string broke down and we could not listen to more of his work.

The icing on the cake was the peace named, "She Ditched Me". What a surprise, it was famous composition by Salim Iqbal, and sung by Noor Jahan sanno nehr waly pul tey bula kay. This song is from the Pakistani Punjabi film Dukh Sajnaa De. Lyrics were by Khwaja Parvez.

Could not  have asked for more. If ever you get hold of that, please do take a listen. You will not regret it. Especially the tune played by Ted Nash on piccolo carried the night for me.

The last peace was Rythmesque composed by Nijat Ali. A master piece of a grand finale.

The exceptional work was of Baqar Abbas the flute master. Could not imagine the simplest of the musical instruments could have such a wide range of tones, both Eastern and Western and in a flute competition between him on bansuri and Ted Nash on piccolo he clearly held his edge.

And then it is Ballu Khan the maestro table player. Mind my words, he is certainly in the league with Zakir Hussain and Tari Khan.

Izzat Majeed came on stage for a short while after the intermission. He was very humble and thanked everybody. I heard that he was influenced by Louis Armstrong. I missed the discussion at the beginning of the program where he spoke at length.

It was heartening to see them perform at the Rose Hall @ Lincoln Center. Much of the audience was not Pakistani. Wished more were there.