Just returned from a week in Abuja where I caught up with alto saxophonist Shola Emmanuel a couple of times. Shola is, quite simply, the best saxophonist currently on the scene in Abuja.
The week started out with us being roused from my hotel room in the middle of the afternoon by a guest who complained about the noise. Claimed he was sleeping; we left the room to find another place to play and found the guy sitting outside talking on his hand phone. Mffff…playing jazz is not a crime. The hotel desk was apologetic. We ended up going to a public park and set up under a big umbrella where Shola wrote out a list of tunes he wanted to play and we jammed outdoors until 7:00 pm. Here is our a cappella version of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Black and Crazy Blues.
The week started out with us being roused from my hotel room in the middle of the afternoon by a guest who complained about the noise. Claimed he was sleeping; we left the room to find another place to play and found the guy sitting outside talking on his hand phone. Mffff…playing jazz is not a crime. The hotel desk was apologetic. We ended up going to a public park and set up under a big umbrella where Shola wrote out a list of tunes he wanted to play and we jammed outdoors until 7:00 pm. Here is our a cappella version of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Black and Crazy Blues.
On Friday night, we ended up at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja’s swankiest (and most expensive) hotel, where Shola’s bassist was fronting a piano trio in the bar. The rooms at this place are over $500 a night! Better luck musically, though. I brought my mouthpiece and Shola loaned me his tenor. We set up and the band let us sit in from 10:00 pm to midnight, enough time to cover about eight tunes, of which I played on six. Some standards I'd not thought about for years, although each seemed to be in a key different than I was used to and required that I not only dig deep into my memory for the melody, but also transpose in my head on the fly. Good exercise, I guess.
Shola was just on fire. He played the best I have ever heard him play. It helped that he knew the band, the repertoire and the keys well but that can't account for how fine his alto sounded that night. Unfortunately the crowd was sparse, which he said is a side effect of the insecurity in the capital city surrounding the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency in the north. People just don’t want to go out to high-profile public places at night. The hotel has a full airport-style security setup in place at the entryway.
Musically, the night was a success. I got in a couple of decent solos out of the half-dozen I played, got some good feedback from the audience, and got to listen to Shola work his way through some first-rate improvisations with a nice young local rhythm section. He decried the lack of opportunity to play in Abuja and continues to work a day gig. A taste but not enough. Go hear this man and his Rhythm & Sax Orchestra any chance you can.
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