all that jazz in hong kong
ENJOY ASIA’S BEST LIVE JAZZ NIGHTLY AND MEET THE FILIPINOS INVOLVED. ROBIN LYNAM TELLS US WHERE TO GET GROOVY, BABY!
Sshh! It’s a well-kept secret, but Hong Kong is one of the best places in Asia to hear live jazz. There isn’t a local club scene to match it outside Japan, and the city’s concert halls regularly host top international artists.
Living up to its cosmopolitan reputation, Hong Kong’s regular exposure to the best Europe, America and Japan have to offer is one reason the local scene is so healthy.
Jazz is a prominent feature of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, which takes place over six weeks in February and March each year. Major artists who have taken part in recent Arts Festival progams read like a roll-call of excellence: Herbie Hancock, Roy Hargrove, Wayne Shorter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Bobby McFerrin, Brad Mehldau, John Scofield and Terence Blanchard, to name a few.
This year’s festival featured SF Jazz Collective, led by saxophonist Joshua Redman, performing original compositions and the music of Thelonious Monk; the pioneering Cuban jazz of Irakere founder Chucho Valdes, and a summit meeting of Asia’s top jazz guitarists in the Asian Super Guitar Project, featuring Korea’s Jack Lee, Japan’s Kazumi Watanabe and Hong Kong’s Eugene Pao, supported by the great Malaysian drummer/percussionist Lewis Pragasam.
During the second half of the year, Hong Kong’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department organizes a series of concerts by both popular established jazz artists and performers outside the mainstream. This year’s programme has not yet been confirmed, but in the past, the LCSD has presented Patti Austin, Manhattan Transfer, Fourplay, Stacey Kent, and last year – right after his gigs in Cebu and Manila – smooth jazz man, trumpeter Chris Botti, who has worked with Sting, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell.
Concert promoters such as the Hong Kong Jazz Association (HKJA) and the newly formed Trumpet Productions keep a steady stream of artists coming into town. Inspirational American bassist Jeff Berlin, French Vietnamese guitarist Nguyen Le and Laurence Juber, former lead guitarist with Paul McCartney’s Wings, were recent performers for the HKJA, while this March, Trumpet Productions presented the great American blues guitarist Duke Robillard, and the legendary British singer, songwriter and organist Georgie Fame, in a club setting at Grappa’s Cellar. Fame was backed by old friends Pao and the fine expatriate Fillipino bassist Paul Candelaria.
HOMEGROWN TALENT
There’s no doubt that visiting stars have helped to boost the popularity of jazz in Hong Kong, but the city also has its own homegrown talent.
Guitarist Pao – who can be seen on his current DVD The Eugene Pao Project in the company of Manila sax star Tots Tolentino, amongst others – made his name in Hong Kong in the 1980s, and has since performed and recorded extensively both at home and overseas. An inspiration to a generation of young Chinese guitarists, Pao has made CDs with jazz legends Eddie Gomez, Jack DeJohnette and the late Michael Brecker, and counts fellow axemen John Scofield and Pat Metheny amongst his admirers.
Hong Kong-born pianist and keyboard master Ted Lo, who also appears on the Pao DVD, studied jazz at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and went on to New York where he played with Ron Carter, Dave Valentin and Michael Franks before deciding to return home, although he still works part of the time in the United States.
The 1990s saw more Hong Kong talent emerge. Pianist Jason Cheng is another rising star, while Angelita Li, who sings highly effectively in the several languages in which she is fluent, has a particular penchant for Brazilian music.
Photographer by day and jazz singer by night, Elaine Liu has emerged over time as an increasingly compelling vocalist in both small group and big band settings. She has also produced a series of black and white photographic studies of the musicians on the local scene, which were exhibited at Hong Kong’s main alternative arts centre, the Fringe Club.
“For me, music and photography – not the commercial work, but my own work – are the same. With both, you tell a story and you create a world of your own,” she says.
That world is expanding. Liu has also recorded an album in New York with Lo, and has played San Francisco’s famous Jazz at the Pearls nightclub, as well as performing in China and Singapore, and representing Hong Kong in the 2002 Taiwan Jazz Festival.
LIVE BLENDS
Interest in jazz is growing steadily in Hong Kong’s Chinese community, but, like many of the things that make the city interesting, it is an import, and has traditionally been dependent on the expatriate population for its survival. Americans, Britons, Canadians, Scandinavians, Filipinos and more are all important players on the scene.
One of the venues that regularly presents live jazz is Italian restaurant Grappa’s Cellar in Central. Here, every Wednesday evening, a Hong Kong institution takes the bandstand.
The Victoria Jazz Band (VJB), fronted by fine British trumpeter and vocalist John Hubbard, has held down a Wednesday evening residency in one Central restaurant or another for decades, and although none of the original members are left in the line-up, its tradition continues. The band plays a popular repertoire of mainstream and traditional jazz to a loyal and enthusiastic following.
Across what remains of Victoria Harbor, at Ned Kelly’s Last Stand in Tsim Sha Tsui, a similar musical bill of fare continues to be a major part of the appeal of Hong Kong’s oldest theme pub. The food, beer and décor are Australian, but the music has deep roots in New Orleans, and is played by Colin Aitchison and the China Coast Jazzmen. Aitchison is British and the rest of the band members are Chinese or Filipino. Hong Kong is, after all, supposed to be cosmopolitan.
FILIPINO NOTES
The city has long relied heavily on the Philippines to staff the ranks of its musicians, and two of the top resident modern jazz players are of Filipino origin – pianist Yoyoung Aquino and bassist Candelaria.
Aquino’s playing is removed by some considerable distance from the goodtime music of the China Coasters and VJB. Hunched in concentration over his keyboard, his improvisations are reminiscent of Keith Jarrett or Bill Evans’s soul-searching explorations.
Conservatory-trained in Manila, Aquino came to Hong Kong in 1985, and credits the city with giving him his jazz education.
For a time, he worked for fellow Filipino, guitarist and band leader Tony Carpio, but now gigs regularly at intimate jazz venues such as the Blue Door, Bohemian Lounge, and Gecko where he has a Tuesday night residency.
“Musicians in Hong Kong are very jazz-oriented,” explains Aquino. “In the Philippines, it’s mostly R&B, while here, it’s more straight-ahead jazz. Coming here is one of the best things that could have happened to me.”
Candelaria plays a similar circuit to Aquino, sometimes appearing in the same bands. Known as Mr P.C., after the John Coltrane composition dedicated to bassist Paul Chambers, Candelaria’s sinewy lines on acoustic or electric bass are a nightly reminder that he is worthy of the moniker.
He too, finds Hong Kong a congenial musical environment in which to operate, often working with pianist and composer Allen Youngblood, who has been responsible for a series of Saturday night concert-style performances at Grappa’s Cellar featuring the best local musicians – including Pao, Liu, Aquino, Cheng, bassists Sylvain Gagnon and Rudi Balbuena, drummers Joel Haggard and Larry Hammond, and guitarists Guy Le Claire and Skip Moy – with visiting performers such as singers Cheryl Hayes and Manila-based Rowena Michaels. So far, there have been eleven of these concerts, each held several months apart, almost all playing to a full house.
“What the ‘Allen Youngblood presents’ series shows is that people will pay to hear live jazz,” says Youngblood. “It just has to be presented in the right way.”
In 2005, Youngblood took a group of Hong Kong players, including Candelaria, Hammond and Le Claire, to Puerto Galera for a jazz festival where they performed with Michaels, Tolentino and other Philippines-based musicians. Cebu Pacific sponsored the event, along with El Galleon resort.
The Hong Kong audience, Youngblood says, is diversifying. The expatriate following for the music remains, but a larger and younger Chinese crowd comes to the performances.
TUNE IN
The traditional outfits have a slightly older following, but a trendy crowd goes to gigs in venues like Gecko, Bohemian Lounge, and the Fringe Club, which also presents big band The Saturday Night Jazz Orchestra, fronted by Liu, on the last Saturday of each month. The band plays mainstream jazz to a standing-room-only audience of all ages.
The Fringe Club, the Bohemian Lounge and Dinamoe Hum in Central, as well as Innonation in Causeway Bay, are also the venues for more avant garde performances.
Other musicians who tend toward the experimental include Swedish bassist Rickard Malmsten and drummer Robbin Harris. American bassist Peter Scherr regularly brings over musicians from New York, including his brother, Tony, who performs with artists ranging from guitarist Bill Frisell to Norah Jones to Willie Nelson.
Live jazz in Hong Kong has something to offer just about everybody. Seven nights a week, it’s out there – and best of all, it isn’t hard to find.
Top Jazz Joints
Monday
Dinamoe Hum 1/F 28 Elgin Street, Central, tel +852 2521-2823, www.dhumjazz.com Live jazz Monday to Saturday from a versatile house band, with special performances by other artists on occasion.
Tuesday
Gecko Ezra Lane, Lower Hollywood Road, Central, tel +852 2537-4680, www.gecko.hk Live modern jazz takes place every Tuesday and Wednesday.
Wednesday
Grappa’s Cellar Jardine House, 1 Connaught Place, Central, tel +852 2521-2322, www.elgrande.com.hk Victoria Jazz Band plays every Wednesday, with live jazz and blues on some Saturdays.
Thursday
Innonation Room 402, 1 Hysan Avenue, Causeway Bay, tel +852 3188-2466, www.innonation.com.hk Occasional modern jazz performances.
Friday / Saturday
Blue Door 5/F 37 Cochrane Street, Central, tel +852 2858-6555, www.bluedoor.com.hk Live modern jazz performances take place every Friday and Saturday night.
Bohemian Lounge 3-5 Old Bailey Street Central, tel +852 2526-6099 Live modern jazz every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.
Fringe Club 2 Lower Albert Road Central, tel +852 2521-7251, www.hkfringe.com Saturday Night Jazz Orchestra last Saturday of each month, with occasional modern jazz performances on other evenings.
Sunday
Ned Kelly’s Last Stand 11A Ashley Road, Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon, tel +852 2376-0562 Live traditional (Dixieland) and mainstream jazz seven nights a week.
Bookmark This Post
