Jazzing things up for Christmas with Gana
“Well as a kid, I use to love music. When I was in my third year or so, I fell in love with the saxophone and I used to tell my brother that it was the instrument I wanted to play, ” laughs Dr. Gananath Dasanayaka, a Sri Lankan musician well-known for his jazz tunes as he talks to us about his upcoming concert ‘Christmas with Gananath for a Night of Song and Holiday Cheer’.
Pic courtesy Savan De Silva
Throughout the years after receiving his first saxophone, he became inseparable from it eventually leading him on to the school band, through Montessori and well into the end of his schooling career at St. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia.
It was when he was 23, that he took his casual singing more publically with his participation and winning of TNL Onstage under the category of solo singing. “I started going for workshops, for Jazz Sundays at CR & FC monthly and I think that’s where it all began for me,” Dr. Gananath recalls as he further elaborates on how more experienced musicians used to motivate and inspire him into getting more into music.
It was through this particular connection that he was able to meet his first bandmates in 2009.
“By 2014, I was playing four nights a week in a jazz band as a saxophonist,” he tells us after he started getting contracts at Mount Lavinia for their Sunday Jazz Brunch and consecutively at Hilton Jaic, Cinnamon Lakeside and such.
“My idol being Frank Sinatra, in 2015 to celebrate what would have been his 100th birth year I did a ‘Tribute to Frank Sinatra’ in Colombo and that became a sellout. It was then, when people kept asking what would you be doing next and it kept on going on,” he shares with us on his first concert that garnered a lot of positive feedback.
Thereafter Gananath Dasanayaka with his current four-piece Jazz band En Route began a series of four concerts called the ‘Great American Song Book’ which featured quite a few classics such as Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night’ and ‘New York’, Stevie Wonder’s ‘You are the Sunshine of my Life’, Tony Bennett’s ‘I left my heart in San Francisco’ and much more.
This year, the St. Thomas’ Old Boy’s Association will host Gananath on stage with the concert ‘Christmas with Gananath for a Night of Song and Holiday Cheer’, on December 20, where he will have everyone grooving with some of the best jazz hits.
“This time it will be a mix of Christmas and a mix of 70’s Frank Sinatra, Engelbert, Tom Jones and that kind of music. It will be a solo concert but with a few special performances” he adds on about what to expect, from two Thomian Bands, the ‘Brass Ensemble’ and ‘The Essentials’ to a very special guest performance.
“I always enjoy rehearsing. For me it’s fun. I love going to the studio and working with the musicians and putting together arrangements,” he laughs bashfully when asked about the preparation for the concert.
Go ahead and enjoy a soulful rendition of Michael Buble’s “Let it Snow” Frank Sinaatra’s Christmas classic “Santa Claus is coming to town”, Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” and many more.
‘Christmas with Gananath’ will kick off at the Lionel Wendt Theatre, on December 20 at 7.30 p.m. Tickets are priced at Rs.3000/-, Rs.2000/-, Rs.1000/- and Rs.800/- (balcony) and are available for purchase at the Lionel Wendt.