Sweet rainy night

Even though there were many unrested and unsolved issues in many people’s minds, certainly they would forget those on the Tuesday night of May 13, 2008 where one of the most talk about in Jazz music industry in Europe and USA, Benni Chawes, had his first concert here in Bangkok at Thailand Cultural Center. This is the Color Your Life European Jazz concert series that has been held for the forth consecutive year in Bangkok.

The first time that I heard about Benni Chawes was dated back to the past couple months. There was one day, I was walking around the music section in B2S (again) and looking for some new interesting music. Inside the jazz and classical music room, one of his songs was playing and I was stunned by his voice and the melody as well as the arrangement. At that moment, I didn’t know who the singer was so I walked over to the player and tried to look for the CD cover. There was one foreign customer skimming through the CD so I was kind of standing and listening to the music as the tourist skipped the tracks. Then, I saw the cover and it said Benni Chawes. I decided to get myself a copy. As I was driving back home and listening to his music, I totally agreed with the critic’s voice that Benni’s voice was superb. He got so many awards for his voice performance. (If you’re interested, you can read more about him at www.chawes.net)

Tonight I headed for the Cultural Center with an anticipation of a night full of beautiful smooth jazz music. However, I didn’t think that it would be a sold out concert. But that didn’t matter. The rain was kept pouring and no sign of stopping. So in terms of logistics and surrounding, it would be wet and damp and muddy. People were going to be late. And it’s true. The concert was late for 50 minutes because of the traffic. Leaving all those annoying factors behind, tonight’s concert would be featuring with an acclaimed European quartet, Anders Bergcrantz Quartet and a Swedish trumpet soloist (for whom I could not catch his name).

The concert started with a performance from the quartet. Then followed by a trumpet soloist, who was very great. After that Benni took the stage by singing the song title “Fly with me”, which was a medium tempo and enjoying track. He performed 7 tracks from his album “Up Close” and one standard jazz titled “Shadow of your smile”, which was an extremely beautiful song. However, I felt a bit sad that he did not perform the track “Have a Little Faith”, which I liked it very much. As the concert progressed to the mid of the program, Benni was showing his talent in voice, which he called “the Human Bass”. He just wowed all of the audience in the hall. He’s so incredible. Also, the quartet performed some tunes alternately and their performance was lively and upbeat especially the pianist.

I would say the night was full of sweet scent of music and it’s really going well with the rainy night. Combining the two elements, you would find yourself let loose of everything that bothering your mind and enter into another world that full of comforting and pleasuring feeling.