The second edition of Open Hand Jazz Fest is scheduled to begin on November 23It gets jazzier

Mona

It’s conflict and it’s compromise, and it’s just…it’s new every time. It’s brand new every night. It’s very, very exciting… says Sebastian Wilder, aka Ryan Gosling, in much-feted La La Land, talking about jazz. Playing a struggling pianist, he ends his sentence, “And it’s dying. It’s dying, Mia. It’s dying on the vine. And the world says, “Let it die. It had its time.”

Well, not if you go by jazz enthusiasts Prithvideep Singh and Nipun Cheema, who on Wednesday announced the second edition of Open Hand Jazz Fest in Chandigarh. A year on, this duo, who took upon themselves to make jazz integral to Chandigarh, talks about second edition, scheduled for November 23 and 24.

“Our first show saw had a tremendous response. Right from young music artistes to retired Army officers, an eclectic and enthusiastic crowd applauded jazz,” opens up Prithvideep, an avid blue vocalist, and the vision behind Upstairs Club, that’s one of the venues for the fest.

Just like the last, this time too expect varied shades – Brazilian jazz by Joao Bittencourt, Italian vocalist Eleanor Bianchini, guitar-saxophone ensemble Syncopation, Parvati La Cantante, Colab & Friends and Berklee alumnus Aman Mahajan along with Akshat Bhanu, the names that are making waves in the jazz circuit.

Nipun Cheema, creative director of this fest, shares, “In the last five years, jazz has seen such an upswing – with Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru embracing it like never before.” While Bollywood has always had shades of it in music of RD Burman and AR Rahman, and songs like Girls Like to Swing (Dil Dhadakne Do) and Kaisi Paheli Zindagani (Parineeta), what it lacks is experimentation. Team Open Hand has pooled in resources to make it more attractive to jazz virgins. Day 1 has a workshop to give an insight into this genre of music. The fest will see a piano recital and two evenings full on jazz. “Like our name, we are open to embracing different sub-styles and influences. So, expect a vocal, instrumental, some funk and some swing,” shares Nipun. That people from Amritsar, Srinagar showed up at its last outing has given Prithvideep hope for another vibrant outing. “A man called us to tell that his six-year-old daughter wants to attend the fest, how amazing is that,” he says. While the entry for both the workshop and the piano recital will be free, there are limited seats at Strawberry Fields School. Tickets for Open Hand Jazz Fest are fixed at Rs 700 per day and Rs 1,200 for two days. “With the active support of international communities, we aim at engineering a transition not only to promote jazz but to create a richer appetite for creative arts in Chandigarh.”