Sonia Saigal and Harmeet Manseta Live: A Jazz Connoisseur’s Delight

It was an extraordinary evening of jazz performance, one of the finest heard in this city for a long time. The duo of Sonia Saigal (vocal) and Harmeet Manseta (piano) spent an evening celebrating the “Women of Jazz,” specifically women jazz vocalists.

A two-piece band requires each musician to keep up to the standard of performance of the other; on that evening, both Harmeet and Sonia were in that zone, “punching above their weight” and fed off each other’s inspired delivery.

Jazz musicians are said to tell stories by their inventive playing and Harmeet was relating some extraordinary tales on his piano while Sonia was weaving the written lyrics of her songs into expressions which were spellbinding. 

The women of jazz who were celebrated included Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, Nina Simone, Flora Purim. Because the same jazz songs are often performed by multiple artists, others honored by implication were Carmen McRae, Nancy Wilson, Abbey Lincoln and Anita O’Day, among others.

Sonia’s song list that evening was imaginative but did not stray from the mainstream. Also, through her choice of songs, a number of composers and instrumentalists were honored as well.

Sonia sang “Up Jumped Spring” written by trumpet player Freddie Hubbard, “Detour Ahead” composed by guitarist Herb Ellis and “Desafinado” from the Brazilian maestro Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Her version of “My Favourite Things” was inspired by Betty Carter singing this song, earlier sung very cutely by Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Betty Carter’s version is diametrically opposite to the one from Broadway. Sonia sang it with a lot of zing. The beauty of jazz is the way in which any song is viewed by the artist, who then expresses it in his or her unique way. Betty Carter did that and Sonia took it on another tangent.

All great jazz vocalists owe a good deal to the musicians backing them and a very inspired Harmeet Manseta set about his work as if in respect to these folks collectively.

No better jazz piano has been heard in Mumbai by this writer in recent memory than from Harmeet – and that includes international stars. Harmeet literally made the piano sing. His flourishes were consistently superb; he seemed to love playing on the piano as opposed to the usual electronic keyboards.

While Harmeet backed Sonia wonderfully well through “Lullaby of Birdland,” “Up Jumped Spring,” “Just Friends” and “Detour Ahead,” it was his solo playing on a medley of “Body and Soul” and “Round Midnight” where he shifted gears into several stages of overdrive.

The music thereafter stayed at a peak through “Blue Skies,” “Stormy Weather,” “Black Coffee,” “Misty,” “God Bless the Child” and others. A fast paced “The Way You Look Tonight” and “At Last” brought the evening to Nina Simone’s “Four Women.” Simone would have been flattered by Sonia’s brilliant rendition. Certainly the audience loved it, as they did the entire evening of a really top-notch jazz concert.

The intimate venue Cube at the NMACC with it’s wonderful acoustics and a beautiful sounding Steinway piano certainly augmented the pleasure of the appreciative audience. It would be wonderful to have regular jazz programming at this venue, a true service to the growing community of jazz listeners in our city.

In the end, the real stars of the evening were a highly inspired couple of performers – Sonia and Harmeet.