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.