Tower of Power, headlining JZ Jazz Festival

This year’s JZ jazz festival features probably the most spectacular line up of any Shanghai music festival to grace this city ever, to my knowledge. The headline acts featured in the outdoor festival are Tower of Power, probably one of the most famous funk bands in history, Jazzanova Live, the live band of two of the most interesting producers of modern electronic music production, Roy Ayers, the most famous Vibraphone player of the 70s and Jojo Mayer, the most celebrated live drummer specializing in ‘Drum n’ Bass’ (the London style of fast beat electronic music).

The master hall features the great McCoy Tyner, best known as the pianist for John Coltrane’s most famous quartet of the early 60s, Kenny Garrett, once a sideman of trumpeters Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw and Take 6, arguably one of the most virtuosic vocal groups in the history of jazz.

This year’s festival is a long way from its early beginnings as a small event in Fuxing Park that then featured mainly artists living locally. I see it as a huge achievement on behalf of the organizers to secure such high caliber and exciting acts and I feel it is masterfully programmed featuring music that displays the breadth of contrasting jazz styles alive in the world today. It is also great to see the festival expanding to five stages from it’s earlier three at Century Park.

Besides the fantastic artists visiting from the US and Europe, the festival features both Chinese artists and foreign artists living locally. I must apologize for my ignorance regarding many of the Chinese acts but the home grown group most exciting for me is Hang Gai, a group of Mongolian musicians based in Beijing who blend their traditional throat singing and horse head lute with rock instrumentation. A definite must see.

Also featured from the middle kingdom is a Chinese artist I consider the only truly great vocalist of Chinese popular music, Li Jian. His voice contains a magical sonority capable of giving you goose bumps or making you feel like something is caught in your throat as his voice causes emotions to well up within you. Having seen him live twice, he is definitely China’s saving grace amongst a large number of pop stars that are comparatively talentless.

From amongst the foreign artists living locally one of the standout acts is definitely Noukilla, a group comprising musicians almost all solely from Mauritius performing popular songs from their home and neighboring Renyon Island. This group covers many songs from groups such as Sabouk and make sure you look out for their beautiful rendition of the song “Bon Die.” They are guaranteed to get your hips shaking to their funky yet complex native grooves. Their performance last year had the audience dancing intensely.

For those wanting a jazz sound more similar to their collection of blue note CDs at home, I thoroughly recommend seeing Toby Mak and Lawrence Ku at the In Theatre on the Sunday. The slot billed Lawrence Ku I hear through reliable sources is actually “The Far East Quartet” one of Shanghai’s longest running jazz ensembles, featuring Australian trumpeter and composer Toby Mak, guitarist Lawrence Ku, HK based bassist Peter Scherr and drummer Chris Trzcinski from the US, a definite must see for those wanting to witness an instrumental modern jazz ensemble with original jazz compositions by each member of the group. They recently recorded an album whose release I eagerly anticipate after seeing their earlier performances at JZ which aroused cheers from the audience.

Toby Mak’s own band features players from the US, Brazil and Australia, Nick McBride on drums, Curtis Ostle on bass, Sean Higgins on piano, Willow Neilson on saxophone and Leonardo Susi on percussion. As well as being a virtuoso on the trumpet, Toby’s compositions are reminiscent of 60s blue note groove-jazz king Lee Morgan, pure toe-tapping unpretentious jazz at its best.

There are a countless number other artists of fine quality playing at the festival but this post would turn into a jazz festival version of war and peace if I were to list them all, for more information please visit the festival homepage at-  http://www.jzfestival.com/en/

See you there this coming weekend October 15 and 16!