It was indeed a warm winter night, but it felt like a hot summer at the SJU Jazz Podium, where the audience was amused by the Brazillian jazz music played by Sensuàl, which is not just another jazz band from Utrecht. This band consists of Eva Kieboom (singer/songwriter), Emiel van Rijthoven (keyboard/componist), Gijs Anders van Straalen (percussion), Sven Happel (bass), and Jasper van Hulten (drums). Established in 2003, so far the band has released two CDs; Acústico in the 2004 and Salve in 2008.

You can feel intimacy in their performance, having engaged with their music by dancing during their show. The size and nature of the venue supported this, being specifically devoted to welcome jazz performances, the audience coming to this show was definitely in love with the music.

During the set, you can witness a lively performance. Eva, the lead singer is both beautiful and talented. Her vocals were soothing during the balad songs and powerful for the upbeat numbers. Supported by a harmonious energetic performance of the band, it was certainly like what they promise on their website, they are blowing your soul away to the Latin groves.

Honestly, I was surprise how bad the lighting is at the venue, I mean for photographical reasons. I know that it is a ‘basement’ podium, but I didn’t expect that I really had to make a use of ISO 1600 a lot. I set my auto ISO tot 1600 max, and only occassionally did I get ISO under 800, and that only happened when I decreased the shutter from 1/125 to 1/80. Thus there was really no other option for me but using the 1.4 aperture.

Nevertheless, the work flow went quite well. I was able to move freely from corner to corner. I really appreciate the infos I got from the lead singer of the Band, who has been very responsive in answering my questions and of course for the opportunity to shoot them throughout the show. Thank you very much, Eva!

For the post processing I did some white balance, exposure and brightness adjustments and for the images that are taken with ISO 1600, I applied noise ninja to trim down the noise.