Jazz Junction was back in town on Sunday, in yet another avatar. This Mumbai jazz band has been making their presence felt in the recent past and its no coincidence that their shows are always well attended and also appreciated by jazz music lovers, or anyone who would care to listen, for that matter.

The band constantly features guest artists at their gigs and this time around it was Woody, a saxophonist from New Zealand. He's currently learning the bansuri in India and he showed off some of his bansuri skills too. The band played a host of standards and the tasteful improvisation displayed by the entire band added great value.

Pune jazz singer Sandhya also obliged with a few tracks, singing an upbeat version of summertime amongst others including Frank Sinatra's fly me to the moon. Bassist Colin D' cruz was exceptionally good the other day, as he conjured up flowing lines and solos from his fretless bass. Colin's fluid style of playing is very accessible and can be appreciated at various levels. You don't have to be a jazz musician to get a kick listening to him play.

The surprise element for the evening, a rather pleasant one I should add, was Woody's solo performance backed by laptop sequences. He jammed, first playing the bansuri and then the sax, to some groovy tracks that he'd set up. Although a lot of electronic music today is worthy of little or no praise, there are a lot of musicians, like Woody, who are enhancing their music by incorporating electronic sounds in an innovative manner. The tracks strayed away from the 'jazz' box, in that they were more ambient, textural.

By Aditya Nain
www.drummingworld.com