Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra live @ Jazz Center, Istanbul, April 1, 2011

The second concert of Ottmar's 2011 European tour I attended took place on April 1 at Jazz Center in Istanbul. When I learned that OL would perform there I found it a very good opportunity to finally travel that city.

Things were a bit unclear until the very moment I got to the club. I had tried to order tickets online but was confused first about the venue being Jazz Center and not Jazz Cafe, wondering if there was any difference in a city with 17 million inhabitants and a couple of potential locations with similar names. I had found a web site in Turkish and English that offered reserving tickets but differentiated between the first and the second set, charging for both. So I tried to verify if "two sets" meant two times the same set or simply the usual order with an intermission. Since nobody was able to answer that I voted for not reserving tickets but simply going there and then see. Jazz Center is a club a bit like BB King's in NYC where you are sitting at tables and are expected to dine which costs extra, of course. Needless to say that this turned out being my most expensive OL concert. Gent, in comparison, was the cheapest one. I do not regret at all, it was a special experience in various perspectives. And the music was, a bit in contrary to what Ottmar wrote in his blog, probably the best I have witnessed during the meanwhile 8 shows I went to. From a listerner's, a watcher's POV.

Jazz Center is situated in Ortaköy near the first of the big bridges and a beautful mosque at the water with a window view to Bosporus.

There certainly is an easy way to get there but I missed somehow finding it out in advance. With no direct metro line leading to the hotel complex the club is part of, I took a metro bus that I thought would drop me before that big bridge crossing the Bosporus. But there was no "final" bus stop so all of sudden I found myself leaving the continent and entering another. :-) Since simply taking the return bus would not have been of any real help, we went down to the water and took a waterbus back. It was just about the moment went the lights went on, in the city, at the bridge. Although it was a cloudy evening, it felt kind of mystique going towards Europe again, watching the city's skyline with all those mosques.

It took another walk until we finally found (!) the club. Jazz Center is quite a small venue in comparison with a lot of others Ottmar usually performs. Rather intimate, offering place for probably 50 visitors. No way the drums could be used the usual way! Jon was hanging around near the stage (saying that there was no backstage area that deserved the name) and we chatted a bit. He pointed to the monitors, to Houman's place where only the dumbek waited (and some of those small percussion devices), and to Michael's where the cajon had moved to and some stripped down drums. A towel placed on the hi-hat.

The very good thing for me was that we had a place directly at the stage, about half a meter next to Michael, one meter away from Jon, oneandahalf from Ottmar. So it turned out to be quite personal, in a sense listening to Ottmar playing live in a way I had always been dreaming of. The guys did a great job! Amazing how natural it sounded that Michael was playing cajon instead of Houman! And Houman playing dumbek in every piece! As if it had always been like this. There were some moments when Houman signalled to Jaren to change the sound a bit but really, nothing an amateur listener would have noticed... Speaking of Houman, he seemed to having had a good time, being quite vivid and smiling a lot. It was a good move to give the dumbek some space regarding that it was a Turkish audience they played for. So even with being forced to cope with a lot of disadvantages, Ottmar, Jon, Michael and Houman (and Jaren) did make the best out of it, performed wonderful music, not too loud not too quite for the listener, well-balanced between the instruments.

And then there was the episode with the chair that had been changed during the intermission and caused some obviously considerable back pain to Ottmar. A pity, to put it mildly, since performing with a view onto Bosporus could have been special for him and the others under different circumstances.

As for the music, the audience had a lot of fun especially during the two new yet unnamed pieces and the songs from NF and Borrasca. "The Road to Shiraz" and "Backwards Firefly" with their percussion parts fitted nicely the place. "Turkish Night", although despite a minor interruption ahead of the song was wonderful to hear - admitting that I might have been the only one noticing the song, its title, and its story knowing where the inspiration came from. One encore that day, and it was Ottmar coming back alone on stage playing "Silence". The audience was thankful for this, and some part of the audience probably more than the others. :-)

Some quick chats with Jon and Jaren after the show and then we took a taxi to Sirkeci to the hotel. We had been cheated a bit on arrival day so we knew what to do when taking a taxi in Istanbul: make sure that the taxameter is on, check that it is starting new and truely "command" the driver your destination. But well, Istanbul is a city that never sleeps and people try to bargain and fool you everywhere. It's kind of fun once you are used to it.