Oh, wow. You’d think sound engineers in Romania in 2009 would know how to manage the following instruments on an international Jazz Festival stage: a piano, a Rhodes piano, a guitar amp, one bass amp, one clip-on saxophone mic, drums and a vocal mic. But you’d be wrong.

Constant feedback on the monitors on stage made it so that I couldn’t even hear myself proper. Good thing I was playing on a real piano. I couldn’t hear the bass, I couldn’t hear the Rhodes, I couldn’t hear the sax. I could hear the drums though. Which, at least, kept me in time. On one tune I actually held the feedback with my piano sustain pedal for a good 10 seconds after we finished the song. Nobody bothered to tweak anything, lower any levels etc. Good!

It’s completely disgraceful and unprofessional to have such people handling the sound at a festival like Garana Jazz. But then again, it all comes down to the same kind of business that’s been going on in Romania for years: instead of actually getting professional people to do the job, you get “friends” or acquaintances or people who happen to have the gear but not the know-how. Maybe they can do favors and you wouldn’t have to pay them as much as you’d pay a real sound guy.

It’s too bad actually. I was really looking forward to this gig. It got ruined by the awful sound. As far as people in the crowd told me, they couldn’t quite hear the feedback out in the house, so we’re left in the shitty position of not being able to enjoy the gig because we can’t hear anything, and the people in the crowd are looking at us and thinking we don’t give a damn and we’re mocking the gig, because they can’t hear the stuff that’s going on on stage.

Brilliant, isn’t it? Looking forward for the DVD. It should be amazing.