A Concert Review of Manu Katche The Scope

Introduction by Güç Başar Gülle

Selin Kesat is a student of mine in The History of Jazz class at Kadir Has University. Each term I give a Jazz Concert Review assignment as a midterm and a final project. The main purpose of the project is to observe a concert from emotional, mental and physical perspectives as natural as possible in order to reflect personal perception in addition to physical and technical sides of music performance. Selin’s paper got the best grade on the last midterm assignment . Her paper fulfills most of the requirements that I presented in the class in order to write a good paper.

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Concert Review by Selin Kesat

November 4, I went to the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall to the Manu Katche, “The Scope” concert. Manu Katche was on drums, Jérôme Regard was on bass, Patrick Manouuguian was on guitar and Jim Henderson was on keyboards. When I examined the audience before the concert started, I realized that they were mostly middle-aged people. Most people were in casual wear. There were no children, and I witnessed a family not being let in with their children before entering the concert venue. The audience was generally quiet and I was surprised to find that very few people kept their head rhythm during the concert, which I am not used to in other concerts.

The first thing that caught my attention when the artists went on stage was that they were dressed very comfortably. They wore pants, t-shirts, sneakers, also they wore hats as accessories. The stage was black and the lighting was beautiful so that the attention was completely drawn to the performers. Images of Faada Freddy and Jazzy Baz, which were on the album but were not there at the time, were projected onto the stage. The stage use was good.

The concert started with Keep Connection, it was a mid-tempo song and was perfect for a start. I felt that the artists warmed to the stage in this piece. In addition, the presence of a cat on stage and watching the concert in this piece fully reflected the energy of Istanbul. Senegalese artist Faada Freddy, who took part in the song Vice, added a reggie atmosphere to jazz music. In this piece, African rhythms were evident in Manu Katche’s drum solo. Manu Katche surprised me because of his differences from other jazz musicians I’ve listened to. The song Paris me Manque, which he performed with French rapper Jazzy Bazz, caught my attention the most. It was quite different from any other jazz I’ve listened to, it was the perfect combination of rap and jazz, which is very popular today. It was a great experience for me that, Manu Katche to tell the story of this song.

The songs on the album were generally upbeat songs, all of the artists had a special solo episode. Patrick Manouuguian’s guitar solo in Overlooking was quite impressive. Manu Katche’s performance in the song Don’t U Worry was breathtaking, all the musicians were ecstatic in this piece, it was beautiful. The synergy between the artists and the harmony of the scene was great.

They were always smiling and supporting each other during the show. In addition, Manu Katche asked the audience to hold the rhythm or accompany them in order to convey this energy to the audience in some pieces. Thus, this energy was reflected to the audience and people became a part of the show rather than just watching. When the concert ended, the audience gave a long standing ovation, so the artists came to the stage and played a few more songs and sang an improvised song to Istanbul. Even at the end of the concert, the energy of the audience and the artists was quite high.

I really enjoyed the jazz concert. It was a great experience for me, I definitely plan to go again later. Listening to these artists live was also very different from listening to them on Spotify. It made me feel very good to see the synergies, gestures, facial expressions and improvisations of the artists playing the instruments on the stage that we cannot find elsewhere.