shanghai jazz scene .com

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!

The most successful year so far

This past weekend, the Shanghai Jazz Festival held in Jing’an park for the first time was an overwhelming success, with tickets selling out for each of the three days. Enough hype was created to make the entire thing a highly desirable destination, with hundreds being turned away at the gates expecting to be able to buy tickets on the day of. Luckily, the water stage offered some free music for the unlucky souls who weren’t able to get into the main festival grounds, with bands playing all afternoon Saturday and Sunday.

The water stage had a great mix of styles, as did the entire festival; generally it featured smaller groups and locally-based favorites like Abraham Carmona, Coco Zhao, Erica Li, and perennial visitors from Japan–the band called YAA (Yokohama Artists Association).

Of course it was the main stage’s eclectic mix of local and foreign jazz, funk, blues, rock, and pop groups that managed to draw such massive crowds all weekend, and listeners stayed around even through the (luckily short-lived) rainstorm Saturday afternoon. Sunday’s hot and humid weather didn’t keep anyone away either, and in the evenings the temperature was ideal.

Highlights

Friday night’s opening ceremony was just that, the symbolic gesture of cooperation with the JingAn district to put the entire thing together. The bands that night played short sets, with just a few tunes from Rolf Becker’s JZ All-star Big Band before and after the ribbon-cutting ceremony, a few tunes from the Shanghai Latin Project, and then a longer set from Tian Square, a Beijing jazz group. But of course, the main draw Friday night was Gilles Peterson’s DJ set, which didn’t disappoint. He got the crowd dancing through his hour-long set, and it felt too short when it ended. I guess it’s always good to leave everyone wanting more.

Saturday was packed full of shows, and the rain only managed to interrupt the water stage’s schedule. I’m sure I missed some great bands during the time I was playing on the water stage Saturday afternoon, so please leave comments if you caught the bands on the main stage at that time. That would have been the Rhythm Junks, Xiao Juan, and Tuan Jie Hu Groove.

I did get to hear Bai Tian’s sextet start the day off on the main stage, which was excellent. Bai Tian, or Mark Bai, has been establishing himself in town as quite a skilled composer and arranger in recent years, and his set at the festival got the day started right in spite of the quick but heavy rain that hit during his set. That evening, after the 3 bands I missed, I witnessed Joanna Wang hypnotizing the packed field of fans with her gorgeous singing before Incognito rocked the house with their funky soul grooves. Incognito’s show was probably the most fun I had all weekend. But it didn’t end there, because the after party at JZ club saw plenty of musicians jamming together late into the night. After Andy Hunter and I got the show started with one sextet set, Alec Haavik and Toby Mak continued with another set which segued into a crazy jam. I saw some musicians from the Rhythm Junks jamming, as well as most of Alexandre Cunha’s band at one point (who played at the festival the following day) and then later on most of Incognito played a few long, rocking funky jams. That pretty much capped the evening, however I couldn’t keep my eyes open to stay any longer but I believe more jamming ensued subsequently. There was also a killer trumpet player jamming with them at the end, a woman who must have been playing with a band whose set I missed because I didn’t recognize her from any of the sets I saw. Anyone know who that was?

Sunday was generally a bit louder, though it started with a low-key set from Lawrence Ku’s guitar trio. Things got rolling when Sugar Mama and Eugene ‘Hideaway’ Bridges each did a half set with Greg Smith and the Cotton Club band, doing some rockin’ down home blues. Zhang Ling’s band from Beijing followed with an even more rocking set, and then things turned a fresh direction when Alexandre Cunha’s band came on with their tight, rhythmic Brazilian jazz. Cunha’s group was my favorite among those who played on Sunday, perhaps because it was such a nice contrast to all the other groups that played that day. Li Quan, a local favorite, followed with some better-than-average jazz-pop songs before Laura Fygi did her festival-closing set backed up by the JZ all-star big band led by Rolf Becker. She brought down the house with her solid voice, voluptuous dancing, and suggestive commentary. I have seen her perform at other events to a CD backing track and always been disappointed, but she really was fantastic with the live big band. That band creates some intense energy onstage.

Now what?

As great as the festival was, there were plenty of problems. Since most of them were small, it didn’t detract much from the overall great vibe; however I hope that they manage to set up some ways to receive feedback about it so that many of the issues are resolved for next year’s event. As I understand it, this year was really a sort of test year for the Jing’an district government to see how it went so they can perhaps increase the scale for coming years.

I’ve already put together a list of suggestions I’d like to give them to improve for next year, including things like selling food inside the festival grounds (or at least letting you re-enter the gate to buy the food outside!  To their credit, they did in fact finally allow re-entry on Sunday), not running out of beer at the drink stand, more trash cans around the field, etc.  If you have suggestions, leave them in a comment and I’ll pass them on to the right people also!

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

A few shows have happened over the last couple of days, so I’m reviewing (or mentioning) them all in a single fell swoop of a post.

The Core at Glamour Bar

First of all, I made it down to the bund to listen to The Core on their final night in Shanghai a few nights ago. It was an enjoyable show, one of the few jazz groups that is perhaps a perfect fit for the Glamour Bar in terms of both style and the sound filling the space effectively. As I mentioned in the post before this, they were channeling John Coltrane’s second quartet sound, and hearing them live it was apparent that they draw quite a lot of inspiration from that particular group and its members in many ways. But thankfully they do so while maintaining their own individuality, creating their own unique group sound as well. But the influence of the members of Coltrane’s most famous quartet is unmistakable in most of these players, with a strong dose of McCoy Tyner apparent in the pianist’s sound, Elvin Jones’ characteristic fullness in the drummer’s playing, and of course late-era Coltrane in the saxophonist’s quick vibrato and powerful tone. So for me the general effect was that the melodies of songs were quite original and the arrangements interesting, and then the solo sections had the effect of Coltrane’s spirit entering the room. It was intense!

I think it fit the club because the Glamour Bar tends to have great attendance for things like this, whether edgy avant-garde or other jazz groups, yet oftentimes people who come might only listen for a short while and talk the rest of the time. Of course, the hard core jazz listeners usually turn up on time, while the socialites come a bit later, so the prime listening time for all these shows is the first set before too many people are talking. However, this group was a good fit for the social tendencies of its audience that day because they had the raw power to reach all corners of the room no matter how loud the conversation level was.

The music itself was lots of fun to listen to, with a nice amount of tunes in odd time signatures (they opened the show with the tune in 7 that I heard on their website) and a few with characteristically Scandinavian harmonies (lots of major triads changing in quick succession). The players all have mad skills and are well-rooted in the jazz tradition (especially the tradition of Coltrane’s second classic quartet–did I mention that already?) while also expressing something unique and interesting individually.  So I was glad I went.

Lawrence Ku trio at the Oriental

I’d be cheating if I said I went to hear Lawrence Ku’s trio at the Oriental Arts Center yesterday afternoon, so I won’t claim that I did. However, I heard from others that it was a good show, featuring Shanghai’s favorite Australian drummer Nicholas McBride and bassist Peter Scherr who is up from Hong Kong for a few shows. They played a program of mostly Thelonious Monk tunes. Did you happen to catch the show? Liked it? Hated it? Leave a comment!

ETH Big Band at JZ last night

A few different things have been happening at JZ in the absence of some of the regular bands who play Sundays and Mondays while the regular players are on tour in North America. Coco Zhao’s band is playing a few shows in Canada and the States, so his regular Sunday night slot has been filled this week by a student big band from an institute of technology from Switzerland (ETH). The regular Monday night band is usually run by EJ Parker, who plays in Coco’s band. Replacing that group has been a band run by trumpeter Theo Croker playing lots of great original music. Anyway, back to the topic at hand–the ETH big band.

What struck me first about this band was the strength of their lead trumpeter. Also their percussionist was pretty great. The arrangements the band played were mostly pretty modern-sounding and interesting, I didn’t recognize most of what they played. Generally speaking, this was a pretty solid band, but some of the members were not as solid as others, which made it clear that it was a student band. Still nice to listen to anyway.