By word of mouth or maybe by social media, it spread. Four cats swinging and bopping the joint on a quiet Sunday night. Or maybe some just like to be fashionably late.
Whatever. The Jazz Volunteers – drummer Mar Dizon, bassist Rommel dela Cruz, saxophonist Mike Guevarra, and keyboardist Wowee Posadas – their third time to perform since the pandemic restrictions eased, were on stage at the Tago Jazz Café this evening.
The last band from the early 2000s jazz scene that is too stubborn to go unobtrusively into the night had found its second wind in this post-lockdown period. The Jazz Volunteers are not only looking to renew their gig schedule, but they also plan to record their first ever album even… if it is decades late.
“Better late than never,” quipped Dizon. “Kailangan na!”
“We have some old songs and newer ones,” added Posadas. “We perform some of them during shows, but somehow, we never got to record them. I guess the timing is right.”
There’s excitement because the fruit of two decades’ worth of work will bear fruit.
That’s for the tantalizing future. For now, the quartet is once more honing those chops of theirs.
The appetizers were served with a pair of jazz standards in Eddie Harris’ “Cold Duck Time” and the Chick Corea classic, “Windows.”
When the microphone was transferred Posadas’ way, he said to the audience, “Hindi ako kakanta. I will just introduce the band.”
Oh, but his frenetic keyboard work, his instrument was singing.
With the lean crowd hooting, hollering, and enthusiastically applauding, the Jazz Volunteers segued into an original, “Eruption” that featured a spellbinding solo by Posadas. And other originals that spiced up the band’s brand of jazz fusion included “Malate,” “A Night at the East,” “Pyramid,” and “Patring” that was written by Dizon for his mother.
Right before the break between sets, the jazz café began to fill up. By the second set, the hooting had been replaced by some dancing in the aisles. Guest musicians jumped up on stage to jam without missing a beat.
Pat Sarabia of R&B band Apartel played on a couple of tunes while Asian-American crooner Fred Cortez had the crowd snapping their fingers with his rendition of the Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer song “Days of Wine and Roses.”
Even an expat from Capetown, South Africa got in on the action as he subbed for dela Cruz on bass.
Volunteers indeed.
Dela Cruz was one of them as he was oft the only one to drive all the way to Las Piñas to jam with the old Jazz Volunteers’ line-up that included Dizon’s Buhay bandmate Meong Paccana.
“Napapanood ko lang sila Mar and it was great to be able to perform alongside of them,” added dela Cruz who is one of the original members of Barbie’s Cradle and will be performing with his old bandmate Barbie Almalbis-Honasan in the Tanaw show at Solaire. “Now, part ako ng band.”
“The band got its name when my old band (along with Wowee), Buhay, was unavailable for a show,” related Dizon who is also a part of the original Side A band that is now called Sided A Redux (so as not to confuse it with the current incarnation of the pop rock band. “So people volunteered to join the impromptu band, but one thing led to another and we became a formal band-slash-side project.”
Furthermore, many of them played alongside each other in other bands so it was easy to find the current members of the quartet. Posadas and dela Cruz are part of the Pido Lalimarmo and Chad Borja’s bands. And all of them jammed with one another at various stages of their career.
“A love for jazz brought us together,” succinctly put Guevarra who has his big band outfits in Project 201 and AMP Big Band. “Coltrane. Davis. Mingus. Bill Evans. And more.”
Today, it is all about getting back in the swing of things.
As the enthusiastic Tago Jazz Café crowd heaped hearty applause one after the other, Dizon paused to think as he sat down when Sarabia took her place behind the drum kit.
“The last jazz band of that era (the Jazz Volunteers) and the last full-time jazz bar (Tago Jazz Café) standing,” he thought. “This could be the start of something good.”