There was rapturous applause as the piano virtuoso Indra Lesmana, wearing a crisp white shirt and shiny red trousers, and his fellow musicians -- the long-haired guitarist Bra Budidharma and drummer Gilang Ramadhan -- came on stage.

Much of Berlin's young and hip Indonesian community had gathered to hear their country’s most famous jazz icon and his band -- a few grey-haired German jazz fans could also be spotted in the crowd.

The band started off with a slow ballad, gradually warming up until they were hammering away at an energetic rhythmic tune -- East Java was the name.

Indonesian influences

The band, which has been playing together on and off for twenty years, likes to improvise. For the Berlin concert, which they only started preparing for in August, they combined bebop, hard bop, cool jazz, and fusion within the framework of Indonesian music.

"All the pieces you just heard," Indra explained after an hour of lively playing, paid homage to different styles of Indonesian music. "Indonesia is a very big country with a thousand islands -- and the pieces we played for you are inspired by different parts -- from Aceh, Little Jarkarta, or the music of Batawi."

And the combination worked perfectly. There was another element, which perhaps contributed to the concert's success -- the spirit of the pianist's father was in the concert hall. Jazz legend Jack Lesmana, appeared with the Indonesian All Stars at the Berlin Jazz Festival 40 years ago, meeting with great acclaim.

Indra had never been to Berlin before. Compounding the emotion, guitarist Bra Budidharma explained in a post-concert interview, that he was playing Jack's bass guitar.

Content performers

The tired but friendly and talkative band members said afterwards they were very satisfied with the performance, as they discussed the differences between playing in concert halls and smoky jazz bars:

"It's always surprising," said Indra, "because we're playing quite improvised music and so our music always sounds different every night -- there are always pieces that sounded better than the one we played before."

But for the audience members in Berlin on Thursday the pieces could not have sounded better -- whether Indonesian or German they loved the mix of traditional music and modern jazz.

One man seemed to speak for them all when he said that Indra Lesmana was simply "a great jazz pianist." Accompanied by a great drummer and a great bass guitarist, the concert could hardly have been better.