No, really.

Over dinner with L (the drummer) the other night, I was asking him how he’d found the experience of the past two months. He told me that he would miss me - “Everyone asks me: how is it, working with Andrea? And I tell them: ‘It’s very easy! Very easy!’” - and he that he feels very sad about the idea of not being able to play “this music” any more.

In my instinctive Mary Poppins/Anna the Governess manner, I told him he could: he just had to whistle a happy tune. No, that’s not right. He just had to make it happen. That’s it.

You should get together with CC (my friend the bassist and jazz nut), I told him; find yourselves a good pianist, and form a jazz trio here. Get together and work out some tunes, I said, and then go to T, selling yourselves as specifically a jazz trio, ready for hire for any jazz gigs that come up in Asia. Including ones here at the hotel jazz club, of course.

So there I was, just beginning my Amelie-style matchmaking - telling L that CC wants to play more jazz, too; and then the following day telling CC the same thing about L; and telling them both that they should form a trio - when, whaddya know. A jazz pianist walked into the bar.

No, really.

D2 is probably about 30, and has arrived in Penang from San Francisco. His day job (computers or engineering, I can’t remember which) has brought him here for two years - two whole years - he’s currently staying in the hotel; and he seems like a really nice guy. But most importantly (for the sake of this story, at least): he’s a brilliant jazz piano and organ player.

I know this because he emailed me tracks he’s recorded with groups back in San Fran. I told him that his timing is lousy: “Not music-wise, you understand, but arriving-in-Penang-wise”. I would have given my right arm to have had him as my pianist out here. Hopefully his right arm won’t be going anywhere soon, though.

Still, what may have been bad timing for me could prove to be brilliant timing for my friends L and CC. I’ve organised a play for the four of us next week, so that I will at least have had a chance to sing with D2 before I leave. The main reason I’m doing it, though, is that I want to bring these three like-minded guys together. Of course, they might hate each other. They may not gel at all. But somehow, I think it could work. And hopefully they’ll continue to make sweet (jazz) music together long after I’ve left.