How The Piano Man Is Building An Ecosystem Around The Culture Of Live Music

‘There’s only one thing better than music – live music.’ Arjun Sagar Gupta, founder of The Piano Man, would probably agree with this line by Polish poet and songwriter Jacek Bukowski. For Gupta, the last decade has been a journey of learning, evolving and understanding the true intent behind what has become one of Delhi’s most premier destinations for live performances. With each venue he opened – whether it was the intimate jazz club in Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave, a multi-storey venue at 32^nd Avenue in Gurgaon or the expansive 300-seater venue at Eldeco Centre – the brand has redefined how the city consumes and interacts with live performances. In his own words, the intent has now moved on from “let’s build a community for jazz to how do we get more people in India to listen to live music?”

However, the story of The Piano Man began much before Gupta opened the Safdarjung Enclave venue in 2015.

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On a relatively relaxed afternoon, I caught up with the man himself at their newest outlet in Eldeco Centre to listen to the story of how he created one of the country’s most-loved venues for live music. Between delicious mouthfuls of their new experiential dining menu, created by Chef Manoj Kumar Pandey, Gupta recalled his first encounter with jazz music during his childhood, when his elder brother handed him a CD of jazz legend Louis Armstrong to listen to. “That was my introduction to Armstrong and Trad Jazz, and the sound just blew my mind,” he says. At a time when music was not as easily accessible as it is today, Gupta was able to do so, thanks to his father, who often travelled to international destinations due to his job. The engineer and Fulbright music scholar has been playing the piano for the festival circuit for more than 25 years now.

After dipping his toes into a B2B bakery supplies business for a while, Gupta got an opportunity to open Piano Man Art Café in Basant Lok in 2012, which is also where he met Chef Manoj, followed by another one in Palam Vihar. However, these were really small cafes, a far cry from what The Piano Man of today is. “As time progressed, we got a clearer understanding of what we wanted to do, and then we opened our first outlet at Safdarjung Enclave in 2015,” he shares.

As I dug into a Truffle Chicken Kiev Reinterpreted and admired the beautiful Gothic Cathedral-style design of the venue, I wondered aloud how he decided to open something as risky as a jazz club, especially since the live music scene in the capital was, in his own words, “terrible”. “But that’s what business is, right? The idea of entrepreneurship is to take an idea that exists or doesn't exist in the market, identify the form that you want to present it in and work hard to do that. And that’s what we did. We took an idea that didn’t exist in the market, combined it with an idea that did exist in the market, which is F&B and kept finding ways to enhance what we’re trying to present through constant evolution and ideation,” he says.

In the last ten years, more than 8,000 concerts have been held across the three outlets, with some of the biggest names in music including Herbie Hancock, Tigran Hamasyan, maestro Chick Corea’s one and only performance ever in New Delhi, Jojo Mayer and Nerve, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, Ivan Santos and close to 500 international artists, besides artists and songwriters from across India. While the programming for their first venue remains 70 per cent jazz, at the other two outlets, they have also started experimenting with other forms of music.

Don’t be surprised if you find Indian classical musician Shubha Mudgal performing there one day, or Indian Ocean belting out their popular songs. “We’re still perceived as the Piano Man Jazz Club because of how strong that brand image is, but when we opened in Gurgaon, the idea became 'how do we present a wider variety of non-commercial western music to the audience, including R&B, funk and soul, jazz and blues, and hip-hop?' With the Eldeco Centre venue, the idea has evolved further to get more people in India to listen to live music. Of course, we want more jazz listeners and to build that community and ecosystem to make viability possible for musicians, but it will only happen if there is an acceptance for live music as a product. Can this become a part of people’s lifestyle, where they come out once every month or every two months for a live performance? That is what we are trying to build now,” he says. With exposure and education, for the audience as well as the artists, Gupta is hopeful that they will be able to create an ecosystem around the live music culture.

As part of their desire to reach out to more people and to celebrate their ten years, The Piano Man has started Clubs @TPM, subscription-based offerings that bring people together not just through music but also art, cinema and community-led experiences. Future plans also include being present across the big cities of India and perhaps, even outside the country.