Fascinatingly Fusional

Last night I went to another free gig in the National Theatre foyer; it's becoming a bit of a hangout these days. The typically brief blurb read "a fusion of jazz and Indian classical music on tabla, saxophone and piano." Enough to tempt anyone into attendance and this was justified by the turnout. It seemed quite a few people, like me, had come only for the music and not to see a show.

The music was quite unique. Sirish Kumar on percussion was particularly eye-catching; his array of traditional Indian drums (or "tablas") produced intriguing rhythms and these often distracted my ears from the other two players. His blurry fingers had an incredible sensitive subtlety - he could manipulate the instruments to produce a range of different sounds with only slight positional adjustments. As I remember from my GCSE Music days, drumming is the cornerstone of much of India's national genre and here was a fine display of cultural ambassadorism.


As you can see above, the pianist Mark Springer was rather random. His facial expressions were quite evil-looking. At times he seemed to treat the piano like a percussion instrument and I have doubts if he had planned what he was going to play. Apparently he used to be in a punk band, so maybe that explains it. Nobody in the group ever announced anything - not even whether the tunes were compositions or improvisations - but I suspect the latter. The three players interchanged nicely, but I can't recall any elements of a repetitive melody coming in very much.


David Wright was on tenor and soprano saxes. He had the habit of patrolling the stage, weaving his way around in a similar fashion to how the group's three musical voices intertwined. He displayed variety with improvisation as well, swiftly shifting focus between slow, lyrical phrasing and virtuosic chains of rapid arpeggios and scalic patterns.