| Hong Kong's Nascent Jazz Scene |
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| Written by John Lloyd | |
| Friday, 18 December 2009 | |
 It's a tough city for a jazz musician to find a gig
In front of one of them, at about the same height as a 19th-Century nude woman's pudenda, is the lolling head of American jazz drummer Al Gordon, who's picking out a rhythm on his skins with his sticks and elbows, keeping a syncopated beat with electric organist and fellow American Bob Mocarsky, who sits in front of and at a right angle to Gordon, and New York-based Brazilian saxophonist Paulo Levi, who's standing in the aisle between the cramped stage and the bar. When the waiter delivers red wine and tall glasses of Belgian beer to the tables of the small audience, he has to spin sideways to squeeze by Levi, who reciprocates with a neat side step of his own. This is the city where jazz nearly suffered a death blow about five years ago when the city's venerable Jazz Club & Bar closed its doors for good in the Lan Kwai Fong area. Peel Fresco is the closest thing Hong Kong's jazz community has to a home base. It seems like a modest achievement, but by Hong Kong's humble standards, it's quite a success. Hong Kong's jazz community suffers from the same plight as the city's fledgling indie rock music. There is only a scant support structure for the community, meaning the positive contributions from the likes of Peel Fresco are built on only a shaky foundation. Few radio programs -- let alone stations -- play jazz music. There's little in the way of jazz education, save for a few private schools, and the only top-class international acts coming into city in recent years have been playing on big stages for government-funded concerts at City Hall or the Cultural Centre as part of the Arts Festival or the Leisure and Cultural Services Department's annual Jazz Up series. Gone are the days when local musicians could get up close to their role models in a dingy club. Although owner Rob Baker opens up Peel Fresco to a variety of music acts -- or, at least, whatever the area's stingy noise restrictions allow -- Peel Fresco is ostensibly a jazz club. Most nights of the week, its small stage is host to a jazz trio, playing anything from Latin jazz to be-bop to swing. At its fullest, it can seat 50 people, and in its two years of existence it has often been packed. It's a lively venue with a core following, and Hong Kong's jazz musicians value it as a place to experiment with their material and play the way they want to play -- but to say it is a runaway success would be to overstate the matter. "We're surviving; we're not getting rich," says Baker. "I told my partner when we started, if I can pay myself a wage a little, and practice my guitar a little bit, and break even, I'll be happy." For now, Baker's happy. The Canadian started Peel Fresco on the back of the modest success of his first bar across the street, Joyce Is Not Here, which he started with his Chinese wife Joyce, an interior designer, soon after moving to Hong Kong five years ago. Now Baker, who before life in Hong Kong was an ER nurse in Detroit, is intent on promoting jazz. Peel Fresco recently hosted a week of jazz nights in what Baker billed as a festival, showcasing the talents of the city's best jazz practitioners and a couple of international acts, as well as running a workshop for jazz students under the direction of master local guitarist Eugene Pao. One of the main aims of the festival, says Baker, was: "To prove I could put on a week-long thing and get people to come every night of the week." He's pleased to say he was able to do that. Australian guitarist Guy LeClaire, who has lived in Hong Kong on and off over the past decade and is now ensconced in Sai Kung, remembers the Jazz Club as a great place for Hong Kong-based musicians to mix with and play alongside top international acts. The Jazz Club hosted gigs five nights a week and was graced by international greats such as Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock and Jimmy Witherspoon. "It was just the place to go to; it was just a hang," LeClaire remembers. "All the local musicians at that time, we got the opportunity to play with overseas artists in both jazz and blues, so it challenged us." The local players would accompany visiting acts for five or six nights a week, getting to build important friendships and learning more about their craft from some of the best in the world. That element is missing for Hong Kong's jazz musicians today, but what has come in its place is nevertheless worthy of note. It would be too much to call Hong Kong's jazz scene a scene in the traditional sense -- implying as that does a cohesive and well organised roster of international and local gigs with a core, reliable following -- so let's just call it a community. In today's jazz community in Hong Kong, there are a few dozen -- 30-40 by LeClaire's estimate -- serious musicians who regularly gig around the city. Aside from the local Hongkongers, the musicians are mainly here from the US, the UK, and Australia, having landed here because of family, spouses, or simply to pursue musical opportunities not open to them in their home countries. Their gigs are often ad hoc and spread across a number of small venues with little in the way of promotion. Crowds are patchy, and no one venue can claim to regularly attract large numbers to jazz shows. Peel Fresco's Baker says there are Hongkongers who will come to see jazz, but it's hard to know how many, and even harder to get the word out that there is live jazz music in this city. "There's people discovering [Peel Fresco] all the time," he says. "But do they know where to look to find the information? That's one thing. Do they expect to find it? That's another thing. We get comments all the time: 'We didn't even know this place existed'." Other jazz venues are even more fickle with their gigs and their followings. There's The Melting Pot, also in Soho, which imported a music director, saxophonist Zane Massey, from New York and boasts a decent resident band that, unfortunately, frequently plays to an almost-empty house. Down the hill a little, in a narrow alley between two buildings in Central, French-owned bar Gecko is a neat spot for intimate and sometimes boisterous jam sessions on Wednesday and Thursday nights. The bar, always kept dark, however, outdoes even Peel Fresco in diminutiveness, squashing a pianist and a bassist against one wall while a drummer sits with his kit across the room, tucked behind a couch area where loud revellers either get right into the music or even more into the booze. On Central's Wellington Street, just round the corner from Lan Kwai Fong, Backstage offers a good sound system, a classy but casual environment, and a small stage for jazz musicians who play to about 100 people on busy nights. Backstage always charges at the door and tries to couple performances with dinners and wine deals. It is one of the few venues in the city to regularly host international jazz acts, but it's more like once a month than once a week, and they aren't the top-drawer acts like the old Jazz Club would attract. Also in Central, Wyndham Street's new Skylark Lounge has opened its stage to weekly jazz nights, but it's struggling to attract numbers through the door. When we visited on a Wednesday night at about 9pm, the bar was completely empty, save for a lone guitarist playing pop tunes on stage. Italian restaurant Grappa's Cellar, in the basement of Central's Jardine House, hosts a couple of jazz nights a month, regularly featuring the Stray Katz big band, guitarist Eugene Pao, and blues harmonica maestro Henry Chung. Like Backstage, Grappa's packages these nights with meal specials. That approach seems to be catching. Pottinger Street restaurant and bar Mrs Jones, which opened about a year ago, now stages live jazz in the weekends, too. Of course, there are the hotel bars, too -- the Mandarin Oriental's Captain's Bar; the Blue Bar at the Four Seasons; and The Royal Garden's Martini Bar prominent among them -- which host mood-setting soft jazz, but these are infrequently gigs that excite the senses. In Tsim Sha Tsui, a rare spot for jazz in Kowloon, boutique hotel The Luxe Manor's Dada Bar and Lounge is selling itself as an upscale jazz bar, and it has recently hosted gigs by Henry Chung, pianist-singer Howard McCrary, and Cantopop producer-songwriter-turned-jazz cat Hanjin Tan. It's too soon to assess how successful it will ultimately be in that niche. And then there's tourist favourite Ned Kelly's Last Stand, which is always packed and every night shows off Dixieland combo the China Coast Jazzmen, featuring a frontman singer and trombonist who frequently downs a pint in one gulp mid-performance. Until last year, the city didn't even have its own international jazz festival, unlike other countries in Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Japan, South Korea, The Philippines, Dubai, Mongolia, Indonesia and India. Finally, Clarence Chang, the owner of CD store Jazz World and a long-time Hong Kong jazz insider, got a group of friends together and organised Hong Kong's first fully fledged international jazz fest, which took place over a week in October last year at Queen Elizabeth Stadium and other smaller venues across the city. This year, Chang and company stepped the festival up a notch, adding more high-profile gigs and booking better venues, such as the Cultural Centre, Sha Tin Town Hall and the outdoor space Civic Square at the Elements Mall in West Kowloon. The festival featured first-rate performers from Germany, France, Sweden, Italy, the US, the UK, Norway, China, Switzerland, South Korea and Japan, and broke even, offering hope for future years. Chang says the festival is "definitely" a long-term proposition and he believes it will be profit-making within a couple of years. "I really believe there is a market for live jazz [in Hong Kong]," he says. "Hong Kong is such a metropolitan city. Why is there no jazz here? The only reason is nobody is giving an effort." -------------------- Hong Kong's jazz venues Peel Fresco 49 Peel St, Central, 2540 2046 Backstage 1/F, 52-54 Wellington St, Central, 2167 8985 Gecko LG/F, Ezra Lane Lower Hollywood Rd, Central, 2537 4680 Skylark Lounge 1/F, 63 Wyndham St, Central, 2801 6018 Dade Lounge and Bar 2/F, The Luxe Manor, 39 Kimberly Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, 3763 8778 The Melting Pot, 1-5 Elgin St, Central, 2559 2777 Mrs Jones 79 Wyndham St, Central, 2522 8118 Ned Kelly's Last Stand 11A Ashley Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, 2376 0562 Jazz World CDs Room 806, Haleson Building,1 Jubilee St, Central Comments
(7)
 written by AdrianF , December 20, 2009
Peel Fresco doesn't advertise? What are you smoking? They constantly advertise - every day of the week you can find Peel Fresco's listings in the SCMP, BC Magazine and HK Magazine. You clearly don't read any of these publications or you'd know not to say something so stupid.
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written by Audrey , December 19, 2009
The attitude is one of eliteness I guess, 'they dont advertise' because they dont need to? People play jazz and acoustic at The Wanch too as well as blues. Those we get to hear about. Does Peel Fresco have a myspace or facebook?
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Just to clarify, about the comment we don't advertise our gigs at Peel Fresco. If your check Time Out Hong Kong and SCMP , almost all our gigs are listed weekly. Also there are the odd listing in I Love Soho and HK mag. We have a weekly newsletter with over a thousand subscribers. The Wanch is a different market and perhaps they have more funds then me to advertise. I was not bitching by the way about people not knowing about our place. What I was saying that if people are really looking for live music they will find it believe me. If you goggle live music in Hong Kong we come up everytime. But if you don't expect it to be here and aren't looking for it.. All the ads in the world won't help. Hong Kong is mostly a word of mouth city. If you get the buzz going and we have people will come and they do. Getting people to come is not the problem, it's getting them to spend enough to keep you going and of course dealing with one or two who complain about noise dispite your best efforts to control it. Jazz is alive and well at Fresco. I would only hope more places would be able to make a go of it so a real scene could be created. Thanks to all those who support live music in Hong Kong.
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written by live music / jazz lover , December 18, 2009
Rob, there's a simple reason for that - you dont advertise your outlet and your music nights. Apart from one advert in bc magazine for the recent jazz festival i cant recall seeing any promotion for your place. i play in a band and my my friends went where when i told i was playing in your place. I saw no promotion for the show. Yet i look around and see adverts for The Wanch - which is even smaller than Peel Fresco - Underground, San Miguel showcases, GBOB, Listen Up! Grappas shows... - all promoting a wide range of music, all raising the awareness of the artists, the music and the outlet. Maybe that's not what you want to do, and if so fine - but then dont bitch that people remark "they didnt know you existed". My friends liked your bar it's a nice place to enjoy music, and would go back if they knew who was playing. Get like the Wanch, put your gig listings out there, i've been twice this week to the Wanch because i saw adverts for bands playing that i wanted to see from friends recommendations. Not only did i like the bands i'd heard about, i also discovered two others i liked and will go see again.
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written by John Francis Lee , December 18, 2009
' Few radio programs -- let alone stations -- play jazz music. There's little in the way of jazz education, save for a few private schools, and the only top-class international acts coming into city in recent years have been playing on big stages for government-funded concerts at City Hall or the Cultural Centre as part of the Arts Festival or the Leisure and Cultural Services Department's annual Jazz Up series. '
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That's an adequate description of the state of jazz at home, in the USA. The Japanese bought all the jazz labels. An American jazz musician can starve to death. Everything good about America has died. All that remains are debts, predators, and a surreal dissociation from reality.. report abuse
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If you read this Rob, let me know what acts you've got on from 16th January onwards. Meanwhile, what's the best place for 1950s Chicago 12-bar? Can I get it at all, or will I have go cold turkey?