The Grammy Award Winner

Recently, I got a chance to attend a Jazz music concert. I hadn’t heard the music of this artist before. But I got to know he was a Grammy award winner and that he was performing at a Jazz theatre cum microbrewery at Bangalore. That got me all excited and I attended the Jesse Harris concert on the 4^th of January 2019.

Jazz Music And My Love For It

I love Jazz music and listen to it a lot. It doesn’t seem to have the same popularity with a number of people I know at least in India. In fact, my wife feels it is a little discordant, chaotic and not harmonious enough for her liking. But I love it (I’m usually surrounded by chaos and maybe it brings out the best in me!).

I feel that’s what makes Jazz special. It can be wild. Despite its chaotic nature, it brings peace and calm. It brings an atmosphere into the ambience. It doesn’t follow the rules that conventional music follows, but it’s lovable and soothing. Remember being in a good lounge before? Jazz music fills such places with so much ease. It invariably is the choice for lounge music.

I had been to a Jazz concert at “The Piano Man Jazz Club” at Delhi a couple of years ago and it was just a guitar player and a drummer who mesmerized the audience and of course me. I don’t remember who performed or what they played, but I still recollect the easy pace of the drum and the catchy guitaring.

Windmills Craftworks The Jazz Theatre

So, at Bangalore, I went to this Jazz theatre called Windmills Craftworks to attend the Jesse Harris concert, which happens to be a microbrewery too! This is what they have to say about themselves and I quote

“The Jazz Theatre at Windmills Craftworks is a space for exceptional talent. Where an audience can experience this talent at close quarters, with phenomenal sound quality, in a beautiful, warm and comfortable setting. All music at Windmills Craftworks demonstrate a high degree of melody, harmony and rhythm and improvised in a manner that is harmonious and deeply engaging”.

Special Company With Me

After braving the infamous Bangalore traffic, I reached the location and as always I was attending the Jesse Harris concert

with my music enthusiast son Tushaar who is deep into music. He is gearing up to be a professional musician. He is passionate about becoming a Jazz drummer too. I’ll feature his drumming in one of the later blogs.

I had the best company (in Tushaar) for music with me and when we reached, the concert had already begun. It was a crowded hall with a number of nicely laid out tables, where people were ordering their meals and snacks. Of course not to forget the Beer!

Perfect Ambience With Great Music

The ambience was perfect. The mood was light and music filled the entire hall. The atmosphere was very informal. But people being people, I saw that some of them constantly chattered through the performance, albeit at low volumes. Waiters kept walking up and down the place with drinks and food. I thought it must have been quite distracting for the world-renowned performer who actually kept me and Tushaar spellbound.

No Table, No Service

We had managed to get front row seats even though we booked for the standing section. Yes, one must remember in Windmills Craftworks you do not get waiter service unless you book a table. I asked a waiter for some Beer and he directed me straight to the bar.

Bangalore Traffic Police

Nevertheless, I gave the awesome microbrewery Beer a miss to avoid a situation with the Bangalore Traffic Police, something that I’ve been in before with unpleasant permanent memories, as I had to drive back myself.

The Bangalore police incidentally are very strict with driving after drinks despite the fact that the ultra slow and crawling traffic of the city makes it the safest place to drive with or without drinks. I heard that there are car companies making special cars for Bangalore with two brake pedals and no accelerator pedal.

Uber And Autorickshaws Of Bangalore

The other reason I missed out on the famous beer was that I knew I wouldn’t find Ola or Uber taxis late at night and the autorickshaws of Bangalore will take you to where they want to go and not where you want to go. With interest, I noted that Jesse enjoyed an autorickshaw ride in Mumbai prior to his Bangalore performance, but here in Bangalore had he tried an autorickshaw he would have probably not reached Windmills Craftworks for his performance at all.

Back to the Jesse Harris concert and Jazz music, I must say that it was enjoyable. You don’t often get to see and listen to a Grammy-winning artist at such close quarters. He was accompanied by Jeremy Gustin

a Jazz drummer from Boston, USA and Ricardo Dias Gomes from Brazil on the bass/keyboards. They complemented each other flawlessly and churned out world-class jazz music.

About “Don’t Know Why”

The songs were intermixed with instrumental performances. Jesse used a classical acoustic guitar to accompany his music and mostly

used fingerpicking style to strum his guitar. He came up with his signature song “Don’t Know Why”. This was a song that he wrote in 1999 and it was later popularized by Norah Jones.

“Don’t Know Why” won 3 Grammy awards in 2003, which included the record of the year, the song of the year and best female pop vocal performance. The song was well rendered and most of the audience seemed to have heard it before unlike me and all of us unanimously appreciated it.

We also got to interact with Jesse, Jeremy and Ricardo and that was a pleasant experience. Tushaar took home some interesting life lessons from the Jesse Harris concert.

The 5 Must Hear Numbers Of Jesse Harris

So if you haven’t heard it before, I strongly recommend him to you and here are the 5 must hear numbers of Jesse Harris

1. Don’t know why
2. Never say goodbye
3. Listen to the wind
4. Talk to me
5. You don’t have to be alone

So my dear friends that was about the Jesse Harris concert and this was the first post of 2019.  For more posts, I refer you to the music section of the blog. If you haven’t subscribed yet it is time to do so right away or else you may miss out on interesting content.

Happy music to you all!