Palembang Jazz Festival : The Report
The fantastic jazzy atmosphere could be felt deeply as entering PIM venue where Palembang Jazz Festival 2009 was held yesterday. It was really great to see jazz coloring this capital of South Sumatra. Audiences gave great applauses as Otti and friends, Otti Jamalus (lead vocal and piano), Yance Manusama (bass), Deska (drum) and Tio Alibasa (guitar), got on the stage. They directly took their own position there. They greeted the crowds warmly and as an opening of music clinic they started playing a song entitled “Sempurna” originally sung by Andra and the Backbone, of course in a jazzy way. The audiences seemed entertained as the song had a new arrangement, jazz.
Eko Adji, PR of Palembang Jazz Community and operation manager of Trijaya 87.6 FM, acted as an MC in the festival welcoming audiences to ask questions everything about vocal, piano, bass, drum and guitar and Otti and friends took their turns to answer all the questions simply and stick to the point giving examples by playing the instrument being asked in order to make a clear explanation on it. They answered all the questions in a friendly and patient way and that made audiences wanted to ask more questions and it made the time ran very fast.
In the middle of the music clinic, Otti and friends played a song entitled “I Don’t Want to Wiss a Thing”, the soundtrack of Armageddon originally sung by Aerosmith and surely in a jazzy arrangement, “Otti Jamalus’ taste”said Adji.
The music clinic ended with the last song entitled “Summertime” and in here Otti just sang little lyrics of the song to give Yance, Deska, and Tio more space to improvise to show what had been discussed in practice.
The next turn is for all local bands performing their abilities in playing music. They were Erwin and friends, Lazetta, Jazzier, Pure Acoustic, Ayu and father, and Caraka. They performed on stage respectively. They were very enthusiastic in delivering the music to the audiences especially for Ayu (a teenage pianist) and father who played “Misty” and “The Girl from Ipanema” in a very jazzy way. This made audiences gave a big applause to them since Ayu is the 3rd year of junior high school student.
Finally the time wanted by all audiences came, Otti and friends played several songs to entertain all the crowds who stood still waiting for their performance. Before starting to play Otti told to the audiences that they would like to make everybody happy and indeed they could hypnotize people watching their performance and got applauses continuously.
The first song was “Just the Way You Are” performed nicely that the instruments played sounded like shouting to one another and it created a very exciting moment that all audiences kept applauding them while playing the music. It was a very exciting swing played at that night. The second song was “Desafinado” originally composed by the legendary Antonio Carlos Jobim. They played it in a taste of bossa nova making all the crowds hypnotized and excited. The third song was “I’ve Got You under My Skin”. They played it in a swing way and still could hypnotize the crowds. The next song was “My Funny Valentine”. Before playing this song, Yance changed acoustic bass to electric bass as people may know that he is the father of bassist and he plays bass extremely well. This song sounded like swing or smooth. As what Otti said at the beginning of the music clinic that music is universal and it can be interpreted individually. The next song was “Stella by Starlight”. Here Otti let her three other friends improvise their abilities in playing bass, drum, and guitar. They played them so nicely that all audiences clapped their hands most of the time. The next song was “You Taught My Heart to Sing” taken from Lucky To Be Me, the album of Canadian singer, Carol Welsman. Here Otti backed again and sang this song so powerfully. Surprisingly Otti called Delia, Ecoutez! vocalist to the stage asking her to sing a song to entertain the audiences and she sang one of Imaniar’s all time hits that later went popular again by Shelomita entitled “Prahara Cinta” this made the festival that night more colorful.
Before ending their performance, Otti n friends congratulated the committee and thanked to PIM, Trijaya and Palembang Jazz Community for inviting them to perform in Palembang hoping that this will keep continuing in the future. This edutainment (education and entertainment) music festival was closed by the last performance of Otti and friends playing the song entitled “Orange Colored Sky” still exciting everyone.
It was indeed a night to remember. Not everyday we have the chance to enjoy jazz concert in Palembang, so a special event like this would surely be memorable. Fully crowded by jazz lovers that enthusiasticly gave big applause to each and every song, great performance by skillful jazz artists and a well prepared show has brought Palembang Jazz Festival to a huge success. We thank the organizers and everybody else behind it, and we hope to see more jazz event to paint the Palembang sky in the near future.
Reporter: Alhenri Wijaya
Photographer: Djoean Kellij
Editor: Riandy Kurniawan
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