Paulus Schaffer trio in Portugal last week

BillDaCostaWilliams

I’m posting a brief review for anyone who is in a manouche-jazz-starved location like mine. I get the impression that many folks here get to see good groups live fairly regularly but here in central Portugal its pretty rare – normally I depend on occasional visits to London and Le Quecumbar.

Our local Seixal Jazz festival normally has a good crop of mainstream and modern jazz artists but not GJ but last week to my delight I happened to spot that the Paulus Schaffer trio were booked for the opening night. The venue is a small concert hall with good acoustics.

Paulus came on alone for the first number – his solo lowered-D-tuning version of the Costa Lukacs’s tune I had seen him do on Youtube. Then the rest of the trio, Noah Schaffer and Romino Grunholz, joined him. The set was a mixture of standard repertoire (Paquito, Festival 48, Clair de Lune) and his own compositions (Drew’s Waltz, Theme for NY). Paulus was in great form, they seemed to be really enjoying themselves and were very well received.

I was impressed with Romino Grunholz on rhythm guitar – very light touch, economical, with occasional well-judged shots (not sure if this is the correct term) to spur on the soloist. Gave me a better idea of what Denis Chang means when he talks about the rhythm styles from different areas.

Buco

Yeah Paulus has few equals.
I love the "well judged shots" term!