I’m back properly to the internet world now that the Java Jazz festival is over. I had sooooo much fun the last three days! Here is the fully detailed review from each day, skip along if you're not interested, since this is a VERY LONG post. lol.

 

Day 1-Friday:

The first show I watched was Eliane Elias. Oh it was great, she kinda reminds me of Diana Krall. Couldn’t get a good photo of her and the band though, and I didn’t stay till the end of her show because it was too close to Mraz’ show time.

When I went to Mraz’ stage, there were already a lot of crowd there, mostly teenagers… to be honest I couldn’t catch a lot of what happened in Jason’s gig since there was a lot of people in front of me and I couldn’t see the stage clearly. But I already knew it would be so packed and the time was very limited, so I didn’t expect much (and being short also sucks lol). Jason was great, his band was amazing as usual, though he seemed to be kind of in a hurry, didn’t talk much and there wasn’t a lot of improvising. Some songs were cut short too! Oh well, I guess for an hour and half gig, he did his best. He sang 11 songs, but he didn’t sing Wordplay or Geek In The Pink.. or Plane.. or If It Kills Me… I can go on and on lol.

Anyway, after his show, I was walking around to the other stage, and bumped into Toca, Jason’s percussions player! Asked him for a picture and he happily agreed to. That totally made my night!! :D Didn’t get to talk much to him, just managed to tell him “That was a great show!” to which he said thank you and asked for my name while shaking my hand hahaha. Then one of the festival crew went up to him and was informing him something and he walked away. Oh well, see ya next time, Toca!

The best show on day one was definitely the Ron King Big Band featuring New York Voices. The room was fully packed! Me and Aina (who met up with me and we saw Jason together) had to wait for around 45 minutes but the show was worth every second waiting. It was amaaazing, wow. I’ve been in love with Ron King Big Band since last year when they played with Renee Olstead, their sound is just wonderful. And then there’s New York Voices, definitely one of the best vocal group I’ve ever heard. It was beautiful and perfect. No other words can describe how amazing that show was!

 

I also watched performance of a dutch band Sensual. The singer is pretty, lol. They had a laid back, pop-ish sound. Which isn’t too bad except most of their songs were in dutch so I couldn’t understand much. :P

 

Other musicians I saw on this day: Ledisi, Mike Stern feat. Dave Weckl, and Simon Philips. Couldn’t watch Balawan today since his show time was too close to Jason’s show time. Sadness.

 

Day 2-Saturday:

I arrived a bit late on this day, and got stuck in traffic around the festival for about an hour. Lame. I missed Chuck Loeb and Harvey Mason Quartet. I went straight to Chielli Minucci & Special EFX, my boyfriend liked it, it was pretty good.

After debating which one to see next since the show time clashed, I decided to watch local performer Syaharani & Queen Fireworks instead of Oletta Adams. Either it’s good or bad decision, I enjoyed Syaharani a lot!

Best show of this night was by Quasimode from Japan. Definitely my kind of jazz. The crowd was so full, I decided to rest my legs for a bit and sat to the side of the stage. By the end of their show there were sooo many people in the room who demanded “WE WANT MORE!!” and they gave out an encore. Two thumbs up for this band.

I also watched Matt Bianco and Roy Ayers for a bit… not really interested in them much lol. I wanted to see Ron King Big Band again but decided to head home and get some rest to prepare for the last day. While heading out I saw Josei from Soil & “Pimp” Session and went “OMG JOSEI!!” I didn’t say hi to him though, because he looked like he was heading somewhere with couple of his crews, but it made me happy because that means they’re HERE. THEY’RE HERE. They will be playing tomorrow!! My boyfriend probably now thinks I’m the weirdest freak ever lol.

 

 

Day 3-Sunday:

Learning from yesterday’s experience, I left home an hour earlier, and following Aina’s suggestion, parked my car at Sultan hotel, which has a tunnel that connects the hotel with the festival area. This was a good choice since it started raining when we got to the hotel, no traffic yet, YES. Oh btw all the musicians playing at the festival were staying at this hotel so I kept looking left and right to see if I recognize anyone. And sure enough, as I was walking to the hotel lobby, I saw Motoharu from Soil & Pimp who was looking through a souvenirs shop and looked slightly confused as to why the shop was closed lol. He was way too easily recognizable, what with those eye-catching clothes and the way he wore his hat haha. I DIDN’T say hi to him too, cause I didn’t want to disturb him…. Kinda regretting that now. <___<

Arrrgh. Anyway, the first show I watched was Gamelan Shockbreaker with their ethnic kind of music. It was different but I liked it.

Then we went to see Slank, which is totally not jazz music.. more like punk rock, lol. It was pretty weird. But they’re a great band, and I have to salute Kaka the vocalist for going shirtless despite the room temperature was FREEZING cold.

 

After that I watched TJNDD featuring Veronica Nunn, who has a really beautiful voice, gosh. And the band who performed with her was superb as well. Everyone should go have a listen to her, she’ll melt your cold cold heart! :P

Isao Suzuki played an interesting show as well. He looks really fun! I think he’s like, 60 or something. But you should see the pants he wore. It’s just a whole new kind of awesomeness, hahaha.
 

I also saw Bobby Lyle, who played piano and at one point started doing the same thing Jamie Cullum usually does with his piano. Plucking the strings and tapping the body of the piano. That amused me for a bit.

Saw Parov Stelar from Austria too for a bit. He played saxophone with techno music background. It was… too loud. My ears didn’t like it much lol. I felt like I was in a club.

Saw a little bit of Tom Scott and Paulette McWilliams, which was great but pretty normal-ish. Didn’t stay till the end of the show, I wanted to be right in front of the stage for Soil & “Pimp” Session show, so we went to their stage and there were already quite some people sitting around the stage, and I was like WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE. GO AWAY. Hahaha but anyway I got a spot pretty close to the stage, I was standing behind these three crazy Japanese people… But anyway. Oh. My. God. The show was AMAZING. Soil & Pimp is definitely the craziest band ever. I was screaming and dancing wildly throughout the show, though the Japanese in front of me were dancing more wildly than me. Ew, sweat.

I don’t know which part of  Soil & Pimp’s show that I like the best, so I’m going to list it:

- When Motoharu (sax) and Tabu (trumpet) started giving beers to the crowd, throwing away beer cans to the crowd. I was worried about my head and my camera rofl.

- And everytime Moto and Tabu stood on the speakers and constantly getting told by the crews to get off the speakers haha.

- When Josei went WILD on his keyboard (god he’s amazing, lol),

- Also HE got pissed off at one point when his keyboard got disconnected and started kicking the speakers!

- Motoharu jumping off the stage and running aaaall the way to the sound system crew stage and played his saxophone to the crowd in the middle. Goddamn he’s so hyper!

- And of course, the last song, Satsuriku New Wave! When Akita started dragging his double bass to the front of the stage and played his bass insanely, the crowd went WIIIILD.

Too bad they didn’t come out and give an encore even though the crowd kept yelling for more. I guess they couldn’t play another song since the stage needed to be prepared for the next show. Booooo. But overall it was a really satisfying show, they played one hell of a gig! Definitely the highlight of this festival this year, for me personally.

Oh but wait, I watched Ron King Big Band featuring Gary Anthony after that. It was a completely different atmosphere compared to Soil & Pimp I just watched hahaha. But whoa, it was the perfect show to end the night. I can still hear it in my head the way Gary Anthony sang New York, New Yoooooooooork. Very entertaining, very amazingly wonderful! XD

Oh yeah, some more photos from the festival can be found OVER HERE.

Whoa. So that was it. Three days of amazing time and great music. Now back to boring normality. <3