Review: The Evergreen Igor Butman in Concert

The Igor Butman bandwagon had rolled into town once again! Jazz tenor saxophonist Igor Butman and his quintet played a jazz concert at the Balgandharva Rangmandir in Bandra, Mumbai on December 6th, 2023.

Butman first played in Mumbai in around 1988 when he appeared at the Nehru Centre on a concert tour of the country, then a relatively unknown jazz performer.

Since then he has played several times in this city, each time to full houses and always leaving his audiences entertained and happy. It would be fair to say that a number of people have taken to jazz after hearing a Butman concert.

This time around, Butman toured New Delhi — where he had a whirlwind three concerts in two days and then came to Mumbai on the very next day to play here. For all this travel, the group was playing high-energy jazz with some impressive solos by each member of the group. There was the added adventure on stage when one of the strings of the upright double bass broke; the bass player, Nikolay Zatolochiny did a marvelous job of carrying on despite this severe handicap, keeping the rhythm going. He played like a fine “team man” and kept going. Once a set of replacement strings arrived, he played like the champion bass player, adding a lot of support to the rhythm section.

The concert opened with “Blues for Wynton,” referring to Wynton Marsalis with whom Butman has collaborated in concert, followed by Duke Ellington’s evergreen, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing.” The evening progressed with some originals from the band as well, interspersed with some beautiful tunes such as “Minina Moca”, first brought to jazz by Stan Getz in the 1960s during his introduction to jazz of the Brazilian bossa nova. This number is a fast-paced bossa nova piece, rarely played in concerts but given exciting treatment by Igor Butman’s saxophone.

The guitarist, Yvgeny Pobozhiy, playing an acoustic guitar is an awardee of the Herbie Hancock Jazz Institute for jazz guitar; he played a fine concert and was featured on one of his compositions, an uptempo swing number where he played a long solo. 

“Nature Boy”, a long-lived ballad once made famous by Nat King Cole was sung by pianist Oleg Akkuratov, who was brilliant on the piano throughout the evening. He has toured India with Butman in the past on at least two occasions. He has also won several international accolades for his piano playing. He surprised the audience with a full-fledged rendition of a Bollywood song “Mera Joota Hai Japani”, from Raj Kapoor’s film Shree 420. It had become quite famous in several parts of Eastern Europe in the 1950s and 60s. This rendition was cleverly combined with another jazz masterpiece, “Caravan”, which Duke Ellington had co-written with Puerto Rican Juan Tizol.

The drummer in the band was Eduard Zizak, a long-time accompanist of Butman’s. His playing was tasteful and understated and Butman remarked that “he is the best drummer in the world”, perhaps a slight exaggeration but making a good point.

Butman is certainly amongst the top five jazz saxophonists in the world. At the concert, the band played a Butman original, “Nostalgia”, which is a beautiful, sultry melody and has been recorded in an earlier album.

The audience wanted an encore after a rousing concert and Butman obliged with the ever-popular “Those Were the Days”, a folk song from Russia that has found universal appeal. It became a sing along with the audience lending their voices!

Butman can only do good for jazz in India. Somehow he simplifies the sound of jazz into an expression that reaches a non jazz listener. That is his magic and one hopes he continues to tour this country often.

This tour was organised by “Jus Jazz” in their season 8 by Apurva Agarwal and Prashant Gupta.