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PHOTO: SAMPATH KUMAR G.P.

TRUE BLUE TRIO Being just a trio, they had to work hard to offer the audience a wide menu

Deciding not to waste time waiting for the concert to start (the previous concert started an hour late) I rolled in when the performance was well under way, thanks to heavy traffic. The trio were playing the immortal Charlie Parker’s composition “Billie’s Bounce”, the sort of tune modern jazz musicians take as a benchmark to test themselves against. They brought it off very well, with Machado, Prakash and Hule all taking solos in turn and showing they were equal to the challenge.

Being just a trio, they had to work hard to offer the audience a wide menu of solos on every number they performed. Machado took the most, but as a change from his improvisations, Prakash had to pitch in with a stronger effort than most bassists would have to make. (Jazz bassists have traditionally felt a bit left out of the spotlight because of the presence of other instruments to take the lead, so much so that the great bassist and bandleader Dave Holland once said bass solo is usually taken by the audience as the signal of a toilet break!) Hule’s drumming, with plentiful use of brushes and other quieter techniques, was tasteful and in the highest mainstream jazz tradition, although both he and Prakash apparently have rock careers going in parallel to their jazz lives, and are close to hitting big time in that more lucrative field.

By way of further variety, Machado, who has a fine voice, threw it into the mix on a couple of numbers. “Satin Doll” and “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ but the Blues”, both popular hits written by the greatest jazz composer of all time, Duke Ellington, and performed by him innumerable times, came off well with Machado’s voice, although he only improvised on his guitar on these pieces. On another piece, I forget which, he used his voice to improvise, using nonsense syllables or ‘scat’, to complement his guitar work. This latter was blemishless, solid and clean, leading the way in an evening of jazz to satisfy the purist.

The trio performed some 15 pieces in a good mix of fast-moving tunes and slow ballads, with the Brazilian hit “How Insensitive” thrown in. John Coltrane’s “Impressions”, with solos by all three of them and an inventive intro by Machado, and “Misty” stood out. I shouldn’t forget Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia”, which they played in response to a specific request, as an encore. Although they weren’t prepared for it, they gave it their best shot and Machado did come up with a couple of solo improvisations.

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