JQ playing at JZ

The Shanghai Jazz Scene is making a comeback post with a shameless plug for my own concert!  Oh well, please agree that it’s better than no comeback post at all.

This Thursday, March 12, 2009, I will turn 30.  I’m holding a big concert that night at JZ to celebrate, and to give some new music to all my wonderful friends and family here in Shanghai.  Here’s a basic rundown of what the show will consist of:

Set 1 will feature The Magnificent Seven, a septet that premiered in a slightly different configuration back when the Atomic Bombshells (a burlesque group) first came to the Glamour Bar early last year.  It will be a light-hearted set of jazz standards and original tunes, with lots of excellent arrangements by the great Rolf Becker, the man who started the JZ all-star big band.  In this set a very special birthday arrangement will premier as well, a tune of mine that the illustrious guitarist Lawrence Ku has arranged for the group.

Set 2 gets a bit more intense with the addition of 3 more brass instrumentalists, which will bring the total number of horns up to 7.  This is the real meat of the show, featuring some of my favorite arrangements originally played by Edison Machado, an amazing Brazilian drummer who revolutionized Samba on the drum set back in the 1950s and 60s.  His music has been among my favorite for years, especially the amazing horn arrangements on his album “E Samba Novo”, from which the tunes we’ll be playing come.  This set will also feature more original tunes written and arranged by myself, but also another special birthday premier arrangement Rolf Becker has done of one of my tunes.  Coco Zhao will join us for the final piece of this set after he runs over from his gig at the bund that night. This will be a very climactic and dramatic piece, in true Coco style.

Set 3 will see the Cotton Club band come over to play a few tunes with me, featuring Sugar Mama on the vocals as well as the long lost Terrence Bowry who is back in town for a while.  After they play a couple of tunes, I intend just to play with all my friends together in a wild jam session that never ends.  Or see what else happens.

I hope you can join me there for some or all of this special show!

This Friday there are plenty of parties happening for Halloween.  But for those of us who want to enjoy some live jazz, one of the best parties to hit will be the twocities in tune concert, the next installment of the excellent series featuring the musical adventures of Steve Sweeting and various vocalists.

They say in the City Weekend listing: “Free with costume. Well, free anyway, but why not have some fun?”

Fri, Oct 31 at 7:30PM
At: Two Cities Gallery, 50 Moganshan rd bldg 0
Shanghai
http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/shanghai/events/32222/

The next in the series of concerts put on by JZ at the Pudong Oriental Arts Center, the David Friesen show promises to be quite a bit different than the others.  Solo bass, especially upright bass, seems like the most difficult sort of instrument to perform solo on.  Let alone entire concerts!  But I have faith that it will be good, since he is known as a master of the instrument and his solo concerts are purported to be phenomenal.

Plus he’s got Lawrence Ku joining him, so that should change things up a bit as well.  If you didn’t know, Lawrence Ku is Shanghai’s jazz guitar guru whose skills are unparalleled in China.

Friesen will also be performing at the Shanghai Jazz Festival the following weekend, and will give a master class at JZ School. More on that once the times are announced.

For more information, check the JZ Club website or call 021-5403-0187.  For tickets, call 962388.

David Friesen solo bass concert
Sun, Sep 14 at 3:00PM
At: Shanghai Oriental Art Center
Tickets from 100-200 RMB

Who would have thought?

These three fantastic jazz vocalists will do a unique performance this Saturday night at a venue I haven’t been to yet, called Lounge 18. Coco says it’s a fantastic space, which means it should be perfect for the magical evening the group has planned for Saturday. Joining the three singers will be Tinho Pereira, the extraordinary Brazilian bass player who joined Coco and Heidi for their recent show at the Oriental Arts Center, as well as Willow Neilson, an Australian saxophonist who is not playing sax at this show but instead playing Mbira, which is the Zimbabwean thumb piano. It’s quite a unique set of sounds to mix together, and a fantastic set of musicians, so expect an amazing night.

Saturday August 23, 9pm-10:30pm
Lounge 18 (18 on the bund, 4F–18 Zhongshan Dong Lu, near Nanjing Lu)
Free Entry

It was our good friend Anna Jacyszyn’s penultimate night singing at the newly renovated Ritz-Carlton 2nd floor jazz bar, so I went by last night to hear her and sit in a little bit. Little had I realized, the band is once again playing in their old haunt on the second floor that has been undergoing renovation for at least a few months (6 or more?). The bar was originally scheduled to reopen much earlier than now, but the extension of renovation time seemed to coincide with reports of billowing black smoke from the 2nd floor windows of the hotel around the original finish date. So until just a week and a half ago, the band had been performing in the lobby lounge, which I understand was not as inspiring a performance venue for them.

Anyway the new decoration looks good, the lounge is much more cozy now with a new wooden-slat ceiling and curtains defining the space; now I understand why the feng shui just didn’t feel right before. It was just too wide open and huge of a room. Also the cigar humidor has been moved from the center of attention to a far corner of the bar, giving the room one more spot to view the band without massive pillars blocking one’s view.

They’ve done an excellent job also with the stage and sound system; the stage has inlaid monitor speakers hidden in it, and the main speakers are hidden in the ceiling above the stage. That and some new sound equipment have improved the room sound a lot.

I’d recommend heading down there tonight to show some support for Anna on her final show there and to check out the new look.

The Portman lounge post-Anna?

After Anna J leaves us once again for her native Canada, what will Danny Woody and the boys do? The boys, of course, being Eric Harper on bass and Tom Finlay on piano. According to Danny, they’ll play as a trio through August, adding horn players occasionally to change up the sound a bit. Then a new vocalist will join them come September. Stay tuned for details.

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.

April also will see lots of special shows happening at JZ and a few other venues in Shanghai. The first special concert will replace Alec’s band’s first Thursday night show in April, and will feature a Norwegian organ trio including Shanghai’s favorite Hammond organ player Steinar Nickelson and guitarist Bjorn Solli (who will be featured guest in 5 below as well this week for our first Tuesday night appearance). Later in the month will see the arrival of Danish jazz group Mais Uma, who specialize in a unique mix of Brazilian jazz and other musical styles. They will play in a few different venues in town, including 3 nights at JZ, a night at each of the branches of the Melting Pot, and a Speakeasy party at the JG bar on the bund.  And at the end of the month, Canadian pianist David Braid will be joined by son-of-a-jazz legend Matt Brubeck for a couple of concerts in town before the duo plays in Beijing.  More on all that as the time nears…

Lawrence Ku, guitarist and composer, has been based in Shanghai for a few years already since moving here from Beijing, where he had been living for a good half-decade or more. Recording an album with seven players is no small feat, especially when it features some of the busiest players in town. I am especially impressed with this in retrospect since beginning my own process of organizing rehearsals and recording sessions for my own album. He has come out of it all with an excellent album, which showcases the range of his composing and playing styles. Not to mention some great other players as well.

The album opens with an tune called “Toothless” that takes the listener through extended forms for the melody and each solo, one of the many epic tracks on the album (the shortest tune on the album clocks in at 7:52, the longest is nearly 15 minutes). Like many of the tunes on the album, Lawrence has come up with different supporting structures for each soloist to make a journey though, rarely using only the melody form for solos to blow over. The second tune, “Sisters” was presumably written for (or about) his twin daughters, and illustrates their playfulness (or how they fight with each other?) from the beginning with trumpet and saxophone improvising together at various points.

The album has a lot of slow, mellow tunes, which can be a turnoff to some listeners but upon deeper listening there are a major strength in Lawrence’s composing style. He writes rich, unusually voiced harmonies that evoke complicated feelings. “Ballad for the Blue Box”, “Speechless”, and “Sentimentia” all show these more introspective emotional sides to the album. His tribute to Monk, the unique arrangement of “Well you needn’t”, brings the classic tune into a completely different light than it’s ever been heard. The album finishes with a climax on the epitome of the word “epic” with the rock ballad “Three doors, three keys”.

If you want to check out some of the tunes from this album or others Lawrence has played on, as well as some live recordings, check out his website or his myspace page. They have both been (as of this writing) recently updated with new info and recordings of his. You can also check out Lawrence (as well as many of the other musicians who play on his album) playing live at the JZ Club a few nights a week. Currently I believe he’s playing there every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

This concert, featuring Jasmine Chen on vocals, should be no exception. The two of them have been working hard, writing new lyrics to some old tunes, and coming up with plenty of new ones as well. It is the beginning of the latest season in the ongoing “Twocities in tune” series.

I’ve recently become a fan of Twocities gallery on facebook, in case you want to get info from them about all their events that would be another good way to do so.

Friday, March 28 7:30pm Twocities gallery, 50 Moganshan Lu, Building 0, 2nd floor

I got to go check out the new location of the House of Blues and Jazz the other day on Fuzhou lu just near the bund, right across the street from the Captain hostel. It looks like the new space is going to resolve all the issues the last place had while also adding a few nice new features to the entire package. The entire space is quite large, as they’re planning to use a bigger room towards the back as a dining room, where they will serve lunch and dinner. They are planning to be open from lunchtime straight onward through the late night showtime, quite an extension compared to before. Also the new place doesn’t have a big column in the middle of the stage blocking your view of half the band.

Lin Dongfu and Song Lan have spent an extra-long time (and extra-huge amount of money) making the new space just right, using the same wood paneling decoration concept as the last place–in fact much of the paneling came directly from the old building. They have 2 levels again, but this time the second level has a whole section where you can look down onto the band. They had to rebuild the frame holding up the second level, as the original framework was rickety and unreliable. They have replaced all the windows and installed a central gas heating system so as not to have to use air conditioners blowing air to heat the place in winter. The stage is just big enough for a normal-sized band, certainly larger than the last one but in a bit of a strange shape I think. It’s an even square, but because it’s facing both into the bar area in one direction as well as the main music listening seating area, no one side can be considered the front. Instead, the front seems to be the corner that faces both the seating area and the bar area. I suppose we’ll just see how the shape works out once people start playing on it.

Jazz lives again on the bund

I think the bund has nearly come full circle and its time as THE nightlife spot of Shanghai is returning. Number five may have come just a tiny bit too early, but even already then it wasn’t lack of business that shut it down. More and more great spots are opening at every part of the bund as well as on the streets set back from the bund. I’m convinced that it’s going to be the best place to hang out in town once they finish the underground tunnel for cars and get the pedestrian thing happening along the riverfront.

Live jazz has had a hard time maintaining anything on the bund, with number five lasting only 7 months as a full-on jazz club, and other places only featuring live jazz for limited amounts of time. Right when bund 6 opened, Tiandi on the 3rd floor had regular jazz for a good chunk of time–but didn’t seem to get the punters in with much consistency. Glamour bar and New Heights have always had jazz shows now and then, but neither have ever been “jazz clubs” per se, and they’re not trying to be. Now JG has started semi-regular jazz parties, but it doesn’t seem to be trying to become a full-on jazz club either. And of course CJW has been open for a few years now at its Bund Center location, but I would argue that it’s not close enough to the bund to be really considered “at the bund”. Even if the building is called the Bund Center.

So with one of the earliest mainstays of live jazz in Shanghai moving to the bund, it feels to me like a pretty significant symbolic event. Jazz is making the return to its earliest location in town once again, and this time it seems like it can’t fail.