shanghai jazz scene .com

If you haven’t heard yet, the 5th Annual Shanghai Jazz Festival is happening at Jing’an park this year from September 19-21.  This is the one JZ club puts on annually in the fall, known in previous years as “JZ Festival” or “JZ Fuxing International Jazz Festival”, as opposed to others like “Jazzy Shanghai” usually held in the spring, or the Toshiba Jazz Festival that never made it past the “first annual” in 2004, as great as it was.

This festival has always been interesting and eclectic, bringing in Chinese pop names, well-known jazz greats, as well as other groups from completely different genres.  This year the headliners include European diva Laura Fygi (backed by the JZ all-star big band!), legendary British DJ Gilles Peterson, and genre-bending UK band Incognito.  The entire foreign and local lineup, as well as all the other details can be found on the festival’s website.

My favorite year of all the festivals JZ has put on was the last one at Fuxing park in 2006.  There was a solid lineup, mostly good weather, and some great sunny afternoons on the grass enjoying the music–mostly everything a jazz festival should be.  I think they have got the right idea this year with JingAn park, as the district seems quite supportive of jazz compared to the others.  It’s also a very different sort of place, one that I would never have thought possible for a jazz fest.

I know this is already old news, but for those of you who didn’t know already, the second location of CJW in Shanghai just closed about a month ago. According to musicians who had been working there before the closure, the reason for closing was a sudden massive hike in rent by the landlord when the initial rent contract ended. Apparently it might have been a move to force the club out, which may mean the bund center has some intention of doing something else with the space. In any case, they also indicated that the club will reopen another location in Shanghai as soon as they can. The original CJW at Xintiandi remains open, unaffected by the other club’s closure; as does the newest sister–the location in Beijing.

Although the club has been open for a month or more already, they haven’t been able to start up the old regular music schedule until now because of license acquisition problems. Now, finally the license has been acquired and Carlton J. Smith’s blues/soul band has taken the stage. They’ll be playing every night except Monday, just like before, and the club is also open all day every day for lunch, coffee, and dinner before the show starts at 9:30pm.

In the past few weeks, Jessica Maurer and others have been performing intermittently at the club undercover style. Carlton has been in Shanghai already for at least a month, with the original plan of organizing a locally-based rhythm section, from what I understand. However, in the end they have flown out musicians from New York (including his drummer Joe who joined him on his last contract at B&J) and they will play for the next three months.

They had a private grand opening party last Friday to celebrate the occasion, and I got to hear the band. They’re quite solid, obviously these guys are very familiar with all the arrangements and have been playing with Carlton for some time. The German keyboardist does a great job covering the horn parts on the keyboard for all the soul tunes. The guitarist, also originally from Germany, has a good sound too. The bassist is from New Jersey.

The new place is huge, check it out if you haven’t made it yet! They’ve done a great job with the setup, so it’s great that finally it can go forward.

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.