shanghai jazz scene .com

Much more successful than yesterday all around

I’m just back from the penultimate day of the Jazzy Shanghai festival at Fuxing park, and boy what a great set of shows!??  Opening the day’s festivities was Scottish vocalist Carol Kidd, who really got the whole thing off to a wonderful start with a few standards and some less well-known stuff as well.??  She really created a nice vibe right from the start with her positive stage presence, her band was tight and all the playing and singing was all top-notch.??  An interesting thing about her band was the guitarist played a nylon-string acoustic guitar, something you don’t often have in jazz…in fact the only other jazz guitarist I know who plays a nylon string acoustic is Barry Wedgle, who used to play with us back in the early days of number five on the bund.??  In fact, Barry recently contacted me and he is planning to return to Shanghai for the month of June this year.??  Anyway back to the festival: Following Carol’s group was the JZ All-star Big Band, who played a mighty fine show as well (if I don’t say so myself).??  I have to finish this post quickly because the big band is back on in about an hour at JZ club for our regular Saturday night show in fact.??  Following the big band was the band from last night, Vienna Tony and his jazz quintet. ??  They played a good show, better than last night I think, probably because there was a much larger crowd who was more responsive.??  One thing I didn’t mention yesterday was that their guitarist had quite a bluesy electric sound which brings a fusion feel into the music.??  So even though they played quite standard material it was much more lively than I might have made it out to be.

The final group tonight was Cuban pianist Omar Sosa’s trio.??  This group brought quite a different sound from earlier groups to the festival’s listeners, perhaps a bit challenging and esoteric for many of the audience members.??  It was likely because of this that some audience members left early on in the set.??  The beginning of their set was quite gradual and arhythmic, with the bass player singing and chanting for a good chunk of time before he even picked up his bass.??  He also played lots of small percussion instruments.??  Eventually they broke into various grooves, but I would say they didn’t really play any “songs” per se.??  The entire set was really a set of segues between different soundscapes, at times excited and upbeat and at other times subdued and evocative.??  I enjoyed it quite a lot, as it was so different than not only the rest of what I have heard at the festival so far but from what I ever get to hear in town ever.

There’s one more day yet to come in the festival, that’s tomorrow with the Bruknahm Project.??  Looking forward to it.

shanghaijazzscene.com to open comments to everyone, no need to register

On other news, I’ve had a suggestion from the owner of shanghai club scene.com to open up comments to anyone instead of making everyone who comments register.??  She says this discourages a lot of people from commenting.??  I think it’s a good idea, as I’ve never had very many comments on my blog and this could be why.??  I’m going to give it a try, but I’m afraid it might invite spammers, so if it does, I’ll reinstate the registration requirement.??  I’d like to do this now because I think it is especially important to get comments from people who have also been to the festival.??  I’d like to know what you all think of the festival, and what you think of my review of it.??  Cheers!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Concert Reviews, musician comings and goings, number five news, upcoming events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.