Well. Word's are'nt enough to talk about the musical experience i had on Monday(05/02/07). I shall never forget this evening. It was a few days back when i went to pick up my bro-in-law that i passed by the Alliance Francais, New Delhi and saw this huge poster hanging there projecting in big letters-'Erik Truffaz Quartet' with a picture of a man with a trumpet. The two things in the poster that kept me interested were-trumpet and quartet. I had to go and see this because it sounded interesting. The entry was free which was even better. So me, my sister and my brother-in-law fix up that we're coming to watch this concert together. Well, come Monday the 5th, the 'together' part did not happen but all of us including two more friends ended up getting our asses to the auditorium in time. On stage was a piano, a jazz kit, and a bass amplifier along with a Fender jazz precision bass guitar standing on a guitar stand. It was getting even more interesting. The show started on time. The band came on stage. Mr. Erik Truffaz(trumpet) and band leader was an elderly man dressed in black with shoulder length hair of blonde nature. Malcom Braff, the pianist looked like a well fed yogi from Rishikesh, with his long black hair and beard. Christophe Chambet looked like the cool groovy bass player who would be in his own world, floating with his liqud gooves. Finally Marc Erbetta looked like any foreigner you would find walking on the streets of Janpath or Connaught Place with his ordinary T-shirt tucked into his jeans, BUT he was a jazz drummer. Well each one, beleive me, each one of these musicians showed that they were anything but ordinary with their two hour performance that followed. They had their own engineer which made things even better as he controlled the sound and effects to convert the show into a top notch performance which every present will remember for a long time, im sure. Erik Truffaz started off proceedings with a beautifully reverbed tone on his trumpet. Chambet added an awesome solid groove next along with the drums and Braff made merry with his impeccable jazz playing on top of all this. The kind of effects that the musicians were creating manually were unbeleivable. From Braff manually fingering the piano to mute his notes and make them sound plucked to Erbetta playing the snare with his hands or with shakers, it was all mind-blowing. The detail with which each note was carefully sorted and neatly arranged to be played was amazing. Erbetta was a monster on the drums with his super speed switched between brushes, sticks, shakers etc combined with his softness and crispness of notes and rolls. Chambet was the grooviest bass player i have heard for a long long time and he kept the groobe while innovating beautifully in-between riffs. Braff is a star, with his virtuouso jazz piano playing and the clever interludes he added to Truffaz's tunes. Of course, Erik Truffaz was brilliant as well, using many modulation effects on his trumpet to give us an infinite pallete of sounds which i never thought could be possibly played live. All in all it was a feeling thats hard to describe when i walked out of the auditorium that evening. All other music seemed very dry to me for the next week. I have been listening to bending new corners every day, several times. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx7xKVgwSpk. All i came out was with one good picture of the band which i put up here. I sure hope that i get to see them again. Infact, i hope the world gets to see these immensely talented band of ordinary human beings.
