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Jaga Jazzist enchants Tamirane audience with eclectic sound
With their arsenal of instruments and confident stage presence, these nine gifted musicians appeared ready to take İstanbul by storm. Their creative, explorative musical style matched and surpassed everything promised by their visual presentation.
Playing together since 1994, Jaga Jazzist got a big break in 2002 when the BBC named their debut album, “A Livingroom Hush,” the best jazz album of the year. Since then, they have released “The Stix” (2003), “What We Must” (2005) and their latest album, “One-Armed Bandit” (2010). Citing influences as diverse as Joni Mitchell and MGMT, they have been compared to acts as varied as Eric Satie and Aphex Twin. This was their first show in İstanbul, although they had wanted to come and play here for many years.
Their voluminous collection of instruments includes guitars, bass, piano, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, tubas, a vibraphone, percussion and a whole host of electronics.
From the first note, Jaga Jazzist filled the expansive room at Tamirane -- the perfect venue for their contemporary sound -- to the brim with their unique blend of jazz, rock and electronic music. For two hours they played dense, layered soundscapes that were at times sinister and brooding and at times seemed to launch the audience high into the sky. The band appeared to take their music very seriously and the show was seldom playful or downright danceable.
Although it got off to a rough start with a fight near the stage and an interrupted song, the audience and the band quickly made up when someone yelled out, “We are truly sorry for that!” Jaga Jazzist responded in turn by lighting up the stage and getting down to the music. They later endeared themselves to the audience by calling İstanbul “one of the world’s top three coolest cities.”
The peak of the performance came around two-thirds of the way through the show during a gorgeous trumpet solo by Mathias Eick. Painted on a haunting background of slowly changing ethereal tones that seemed to make time stand still, Eick mesmerized the crowd with a sublime, deeply satisfying solo.
Jaga Jazzist’s lighting and stage design contributed well to the successful evening. The stage was decorated with placards depicting images from slot machines -- a watermelon, a bell, a pair of cherries and a lucky number seven -- lit from below and saturated with color. The air above the stage was thick from the fog machine; perfect for the brief laser light show that was wired to perfectly match punctuating bursts of sound from the piano.
Hopefully Jaga Jazzist will make many more trips to share their creative sound with İstanbul. And if their instruments will fit on a plane, maybe they won’t even have to take a Viking ship.
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