shanghai jazz scene .com

Since I didn’t make it to last night’s show at twocities, I made a special effort to go hear the Canadian piano-cello duo this afternoon at Glamour Bar, and enjoyed it.  The two players are both quite virtuosic on their respective axes, not to mention well versed in both the classical and jazz realms.  And though there were plenty of jazz and classical influences present in the music, most of it was generally unclassifiable, eclectic melanges of various world rhythms and tonalities.  Overall lots of fun…it made me think how (even more) exciting it would be to hear the two leading a larger ensemble playing the same music.

The two mainly performed pieces from their album twotet/deuxtet including Wash Away (inspired by a dream in which Chopin meets Ray Charles), Huevos Verdes Y Jamon (a springy tune with a Latin feel featuring percussive cello playing), Sniffinâ?? Around, and Spirit Dance.

One listener I interviewed felt that Matt Brubeck (who is actually American, but is now based in Toronto) had an uncanny resemblance to Samuel Beckett.  However it is unverifiable currently due to the lack of pictures online of Beckett in his youth.

Well, as we reported a while back, the word on the street was that the live music was going to stop completely at the Blues Room. Fortunately, that has proven untrue, with a new band playing three nights a week. The new group playing there, headed by Willow Neilson, features various musicians and vocalists on different nights. The core group, however, includes Erica Li on vocals, Steinar Nickelson or Sean Higgins on organ, and Nicholas McBride on drums. The trio’s name is “Three point strike”, possibly a reference to the burgeoning kung fu prowess of the band leader. They rock out with a mix of not only jazz but also funk, afro-beat, soul, and R&B flavors among other musical stylings.

Three point strike is playing three days every week: Thursday (from 10pm to 1am), Friday and Saturday (11pm to 2am), and I believe they have ditched the Southern soul food menu and are serving the same food as the City Diner upstairs.

The Blues Room. 146 Tongren Lu.

Live music now every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.

You might know that I am a great proponent of original music as opposed to jazz standards, or at least jazz standards done the same old way. So I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by Burnett Thompson’s piano trio show last night at JZ, as he played tons of cool original tunes. As promised, he was joined by a few special guests, including myself briefly, which made the whole experience even richer.

For the hour-plus long first set, the trio (made up of Burnett, Chris Trzcinski on drums, and E.J. Parker on bass) was joined by Alec Haavik on tenor and soprano saxophones. I missed the first couple of tunes, but got to hear the last 4 or 5 in the set, which were nearly all original tunes of Burnett’s. His own compositions ranged in styles from straight-ahead jazz to funky rock and 12-tone free stuff.  He also played or sang the occasional jazz standard.

Peppered throughout the night were songs from original jazz suites of his, the â??Creation Jazz Suiteâ? and the â??Planet Suiteâ?, which included a number of pieces named for various planets. A tune from the “Creation Jazz Suite” called “Heaven”, which was the one I joined the group on, was a 12-tone piece that was quite “out-there”, a listening challenge posed to the audience. I also heard “Neptune”, which was a fantastic tune played by the trio alone. There were plenty of other great tunes I also got to hear that I didn’t remember the names of.

He also was joined by the great Flamenco guitarist/vocalist Abraham Carmona for 2 tunes, one or both of which were compositions of Abraham’s own. Abraham sang and played guitar for one that was a sort of Flamenco-style rumba, and the other he was featured on vocals only–a passionate, fun Argentine-style Tango.

The illustrious Coco Zhao came up to finish the second set with the group, doing the old Shanghai classic “?????” (I want your love) in the great arrangement from Coco’s own album “Dream Situation“.

Unfortunately, I had to leave after the second set, but I understand they played some more original tunes in the third set.  Were you there?  Leave a comment about we missed.

I know he’s meant to be quite a bit more brilliant in concert than we saw the other night, but it seems as though a few things conspired to make Harry Connick’s Shanghai show this past Sunday less great than it really should have been. I thought for one that the rest of the band played way too small a role, it seems that I heard more from Bjork’s brass section the week before! And when they were playing, you could barely hear them as the piano and voice were so much higher in the mix the horns got drowned out. I fell asleep at the beginning of the show, with all the solo piano and mellow vocals happening early on. Then it was the same 2 or 3 players taking horn solos all night, and there was only one trumpet solo in the entire show! It makes you wonder what the heck was going on for this to happen, after all the hype about this great big band.

But then it dawned on me what the Ministry of Culture said in response to Bjork’s political outburst at her concert the week before, right at the end of the press release: “From now on, stricter controls will be placed on performances by foreign artists in China to prevent similar incidents from happening.” Bingo! Sure enough, players in Connick’s band told us that the government people showed up an hour before they were to play and went to town on their set list, crossing off a number of tunes they disapproved of (what was Harry thinking, trying to play all that counter-revolutionary garbage anyway?) and replacing them with “safer” tunes. Tunes, of course, which the band did not happen to have charts on hand for. Thus explains the extraordinary number of solo piano-with-vocals tunes heard throughout the show.

However, it doesn’t explain the lack of trombone sound coming out of the speakers when we could see they were obviously chugging away on their horns at times. Or does it? Maybe the Cultural Bureau had a representative sitting at the soundboard as a condition of letting the show go ahead. Somehow I doubt it though…from where I was sitting the sound guys all looked like Westerners.

Also slightly annoying was some lights onstage shining directly into our eyes for some tunes. I wouldn’t feel it a reasonable complaint if we’d bought the cheapest seats, but we were a notch up at 500 a pop.

I also can’t say I was particularly impressed with Lucien Barbarin’s trombone playing on all those tunes where he was a featured soloist, but maybe I’m overly critical of trombonists after knowing and playing with Andy Hunter for such a long time.

But how about the Canadian guy he invited up on stage to chat with about food!? He sure didn’t do a very good job of representing China! He was also getting pretty touchy-feely right up there. Anyway, he lost the opportunity to easily win the “who eats weirder foods” contest as he didn’t even mention things like dog, snake, bees, all the various animal heads we eat here in China, etc. after Harry brought up things like chitlins, alligator and raccoon.

We were fortunate to have Jeff Bush, who plays trombone in Connick’s big band, join the JZ all-star big band last Saturday night though. He brought a solid and stable power into what is our local big band’s weakest section. I was disappointed that he didn’t get to improvise on any tunes at all for Harry Connick Jr’s show, since he sounded fine blowing on a couple tunes Saturday.