Since 2007, I ussually spend my Saturdays at my parents tiny cottage, as
my father is too old to carry out agricultural tasks. For me it is some
sort of a “non stop farmer journey” from 8:00 that we arrive there to
15:00 I am back at home. When I get home, I’m often quite tired, so the
idea of a concert, on Saturday at 20:30 is not always desirable.
The " Autumn Jazz 2015" festival taking place in my town ‘till netx December, 3, features a set of five concerts. I had agreed with my cousin to attend some of them.
The first chosen one was “Richard Bona Group”. Saturday, November 7 at the Cuyás Theatre. 20:30
The " Autumn Jazz 2015" festival taking place in my town ‘till netx December, 3, features a set of five concerts. I had agreed with my cousin to attend some of them.
The first chosen one was “Richard Bona Group”. Saturday, November 7 at the Cuyás Theatre. 20:30
We had already had the chance to see this Cameroonian bassist live last
time he visited our island back in 2006 and I had fond memories of that
performance.
Our seats were in the second amphitheater and mine in particular in the second row. My mates were in the first row. I was the last one to buy the tickets and I found no seats avalaible netx to them.
With ten minutes delay, Richard Bonna stepped on the stage. He introduced the band members. The Italian Cirrus Manna on guitar, the Cuban Ludwig Afonso on drums and the North Americans, Isamu McGregor and Tatum Greenblat on keyboards and trumpet respectively.
Richard Bona is an exceptional bassist that offers a superb and highly recommended live show. With his phrasing, exquisite and delicate on some ocassions, powerful and vigorous on others, he chained track after track in front of an audience, surrended almost from the beggining of the concert.
The Cameroonian on the other hand, is such a friendly guy that he just needed five minutes to have the audience eating on the palm of his hand. He made the public sing letting them interact with him quite often. He said he had bet $ 500 to someone on the team to sing a song in Spanish and he did it. When nobody expected, no drums, no keyboard, no trumpet…….just him and his bass guitar…….. and he began to play “Quizas, quizas, quizas” asking the audience for collaboration –Bona didn’t know the lyrics- but the most of the audience did know the lyrics for sure. Nat King Cole used to be very popular in España by the end of the Fifties. It was a very cool performance.
The rest of the band did a superb job too. They sounded perfectly assembled.
Perhaps, Tatum Greenblat –apart from Bona- was the one who got my attention the most. His trumpet sounded warm, enveloping, complete. He executed riffs that merged nicely with Bona’s bass guitar playing, filling up the venue with a deliciously rounded tone. When they both performed what the Cameroonian called a “ballad” , -it looked to me more a “bolero”-, they offered the most sublime moments of the concert, IMHO.
With the exception of this delicious, full of good taste ballad in which Bona with its measured silences, with a clean sound coming from a very slow phrasing, all wrapped with an accurate execution plus an astonished fretwork that made sound clear and diaphanous, almost tangible, every single note coming out from that bass guitar, one more track I can’t recall its name and one more from Jaco Pastorius that I loved, the rest of the repertoire was loaded with a deep and elegantly arranged ethnic flavour, due, IMHO, to Bona’s peculiar voice timbre when he sings in his mother tongue, a timbre however, that sounded completely different when he was singing in English, a radical shift in his vocal register my ear was able to distinguish with clarity. His vocal versatility is outstanding, but I gotta admit that I rather prefer him when he sings in English.
The Cameroonian made a superb demonstration of technique throughout the entire show, but he performed a duo with drummer Ludwig Afonso that removed me on the seat. Quite impressive!
More than half of the concert had gone when I noticed that part of the audience showed an inordinate desire to express Bona and his band mates, some sort of “unconditional devotion”. The irruption of gratuitous applauses in the middle of the songs or before the ending of the track, went in crescendo. One of these particular interruptions was…….disgusting! The tension-release thing of this track was about to be resolved, the band executes a silence that anticipate that last chord, the one that finally release that accumulated tension, and that silence is covered by unacceptables applauses that ruined the whole track. I swear I still don’t know how, but at that moment there was a gun in my hand, Your Honor!
From my seat the stage was reasonably well at sight despite the distance, but in the first row, just in front of me, -I remember this episode with renovated affection- two girls, not in their twenties, spent part of the show joining their heads to whisper, inviting me soon to turn my portable heart pacemaker on and forcing me to resort, as Dr. Sheldon Cooper often does, to "Kolinaar " –a Vulcan ritual by which emotions are removed-, to prevent myself from a heart attack, so when the band was performed the last track ......... ..the people was already up from their seats ... .. ... ..the two girls in front of me……….too...............I suddenly saw myself sourrounded but people that were not sat……..........folks, I swear that with the agricultural morning and the irrepressible public frenzy, I had had enough, I got up and left the venue without waiting for the encore.
By the way, as he did back in 2006, Bona went alone on stage just to build up a song using multitrack looping recorder. I remember Bona then, kindly asking the audience for silence while he was constructing the track…….the public started clapping every time a new loop was added to the song ............ .
Our seats were in the second amphitheater and mine in particular in the second row. My mates were in the first row. I was the last one to buy the tickets and I found no seats avalaible netx to them.
With ten minutes delay, Richard Bonna stepped on the stage. He introduced the band members. The Italian Cirrus Manna on guitar, the Cuban Ludwig Afonso on drums and the North Americans, Isamu McGregor and Tatum Greenblat on keyboards and trumpet respectively.
Richard Bona is an exceptional bassist that offers a superb and highly recommended live show. With his phrasing, exquisite and delicate on some ocassions, powerful and vigorous on others, he chained track after track in front of an audience, surrended almost from the beggining of the concert.
The Cameroonian on the other hand, is such a friendly guy that he just needed five minutes to have the audience eating on the palm of his hand. He made the public sing letting them interact with him quite often. He said he had bet $ 500 to someone on the team to sing a song in Spanish and he did it. When nobody expected, no drums, no keyboard, no trumpet…….just him and his bass guitar…….. and he began to play “Quizas, quizas, quizas” asking the audience for collaboration –Bona didn’t know the lyrics- but the most of the audience did know the lyrics for sure. Nat King Cole used to be very popular in España by the end of the Fifties. It was a very cool performance.
The rest of the band did a superb job too. They sounded perfectly assembled.
Perhaps, Tatum Greenblat –apart from Bona- was the one who got my attention the most. His trumpet sounded warm, enveloping, complete. He executed riffs that merged nicely with Bona’s bass guitar playing, filling up the venue with a deliciously rounded tone. When they both performed what the Cameroonian called a “ballad” , -it looked to me more a “bolero”-, they offered the most sublime moments of the concert, IMHO.
With the exception of this delicious, full of good taste ballad in which Bona with its measured silences, with a clean sound coming from a very slow phrasing, all wrapped with an accurate execution plus an astonished fretwork that made sound clear and diaphanous, almost tangible, every single note coming out from that bass guitar, one more track I can’t recall its name and one more from Jaco Pastorius that I loved, the rest of the repertoire was loaded with a deep and elegantly arranged ethnic flavour, due, IMHO, to Bona’s peculiar voice timbre when he sings in his mother tongue, a timbre however, that sounded completely different when he was singing in English, a radical shift in his vocal register my ear was able to distinguish with clarity. His vocal versatility is outstanding, but I gotta admit that I rather prefer him when he sings in English.
The Cameroonian made a superb demonstration of technique throughout the entire show, but he performed a duo with drummer Ludwig Afonso that removed me on the seat. Quite impressive!
More than half of the concert had gone when I noticed that part of the audience showed an inordinate desire to express Bona and his band mates, some sort of “unconditional devotion”. The irruption of gratuitous applauses in the middle of the songs or before the ending of the track, went in crescendo. One of these particular interruptions was…….disgusting! The tension-release thing of this track was about to be resolved, the band executes a silence that anticipate that last chord, the one that finally release that accumulated tension, and that silence is covered by unacceptables applauses that ruined the whole track. I swear I still don’t know how, but at that moment there was a gun in my hand, Your Honor!
From my seat the stage was reasonably well at sight despite the distance, but in the first row, just in front of me, -I remember this episode with renovated affection- two girls, not in their twenties, spent part of the show joining their heads to whisper, inviting me soon to turn my portable heart pacemaker on and forcing me to resort, as Dr. Sheldon Cooper often does, to "Kolinaar " –a Vulcan ritual by which emotions are removed-, to prevent myself from a heart attack, so when the band was performed the last track ......... ..the people was already up from their seats ... .. ... ..the two girls in front of me……….too...............I suddenly saw myself sourrounded but people that were not sat……..........folks, I swear that with the agricultural morning and the irrepressible public frenzy, I had had enough, I got up and left the venue without waiting for the encore.
By the way, as he did back in 2006, Bona went alone on stage just to build up a song using multitrack looping recorder. I remember Bona then, kindly asking the audience for silence while he was constructing the track…….the public started clapping every time a new loop was added to the song ............ .
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