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.

You might have noticed the new poster in front of JZ with life-size photos of yours truly and a few other players staring at you as you walk by or eat a sandwich at the cafe across the street.  Starting in April, which begins this coming Tuesday in fact, the JZ performance schedule will see some changes, just as the poster promises. Nothing huge actually, just a switch between Tuesday and Thursday nights. The two bands affected are Alec Haavik’s Friction Five and my own band that plays both straight-ahead and modern original jazz, Five Below.

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…

A review of this excellent album was requested in an anonymous comment quite a long time ago, and I’ve been planning to write it for a while now. So now I’ve finally gotten around to it, even though the album has been out for about a year already. Better late than never, especially in the case of a beautiful musical work like this. I would like to review more locally recorded and produced jazz albums, so if you know of some worthy one that might have escaped my attention, let me know in an email or leave a comment and I’ll get to it eventually.

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.

Steve Sweeting knows how to bring creativity out of vocalists. Having worked with a number of local singers in Shanghai since he moved out here almost two years ago, he has produced a number of concerts and even a few albums already with many of Shanghai’s best singers. His popular ongoing vocal-piano duo concert series at Twocities gallery “Twocities in tune,” has always been well-attended, as they tend to premier new music and ideas. Even people who have heard these singers before are amazed at these concerts because there’s always plenty of completely new stuff.

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