Big Brother in Beijing...
It was a whole different story in Beijing, it was colder in many ways. Soldiers marching around and keeping watch on every block; A general presence of "big brother" was a lot more tangible than in the previous cities we had visited. Also, the city was a huge construction site, generally speaking, due to the preparatory work for the coming olympic games of 2008. We performed two very enjoyable nights in a great-sounding room, a jazz club called cd-café. The club has nice drums, a great piano and a good sound system. The small but intently listening audience was very nice, and what they lacked in number, they made up for in spirit.

Yu Gong Yi Shan was the name of the last club we performed at in Beijing, and in China, for that matter. A very hard to find club, but with a lot of vibe. The promoter, Peter had done a lot of legwork, as there were a lot of people there. They were ALL western, however, and the club had a very european vibe to it, so it felt like we were performing somewhere in europe! It could have been anywhere...

Shanghai
Our days in Shanghai were spent teaching at the jazz department of the Shanghai conservatory. The students were beginners at jazz (the jazz department is in it's third month) but they were all accomplished readers and classical players. Time will tell, and we will see them next October, when we will return to Shanghai to perform at a jazz festival. Most nights we spent hanging out at the JZ jazz club, where there seems to be a high percentage of american musicians performing on a nightly basis. We heard some nice music, and jammed with them every night until the wee hours, which was great fun. JZ is like a local hang-out living room where all of the musicians come after their gigs to play and meet each other. Shanghai has a very inspiring jazz scene, there are a lot of people in the audience and the musicians are free to perform their own compositions the way they want to present it; using a lot of varying dynamics and textures/vehicles to achieve a dynamic set. This was very nice to observe, especially in comparison to the strict (club/restaurant implemented) guidelines of the bay area jazz scene. In my opinion, people (and most importantly "the layman") come to hear jazz music for the energy it puts across and out to the listener. They aren't necessarily dissecting it and really "hearing" what each improviser is playing or superimposing over the chords and form of the song, but rather hearing the honesty and energy the musicians are playing with. Shanghai has all of the potential of any jazz scene, and I'm sure more musicians will venture over to the city once they realize they can make a good living playing their own music without compromise there...

We left to play at the other JZ club in Hangzhou. The club itself is in a building from 1921, and it features hand-carved wooden ceilings and a beautiful idyllic lake scene with traditional chinese buildings right by the water. Unfortunately, I was hit by some 24-hour stomach bug which forced me to stop playing after two tunes.


The next day, we returned for our last gig at the Shanghai JZ with some hilarious incidents happening before the actual gig which are better left untold. Next up was Beijing.

Crazy Chengdu


We've been performing at the "Showcase Europe" expo for the last two days in the outskirts of Chengdu, in the Sichuan Province. We mostly stayed in the expo area, except for a few excursions into town to eat local food and mingle with locals. Last night, we were treated to some SLAMMING barbeque and chinese poker!

The expo featured performers from across most of europe, with performances ranging from high culture (improvised music, vocal music from many cultures and modern dance) to the most abjectly philistine (simulated video game street fighting and DJ:s, among other things).

It was interesting to notice the audience reaction to each perfomance. They (apparently) hadn't seen any of the featured types of performance before, but they honestly seemed more interested in the more high-brow perfomances. The "street" performances were clearly designed for a 100% success rate as far as every one observing "getting it" was concerned, but every performer was granted equal concentration.

Our last performance was ended by a rather sad event; An enraged or otherwise mentally unstable teenager with the scariest look in his eye I've seen on this trip so far ran up to the stage as we were playing from the very large crowd. He jumped onto the rather high stage and as he was getting up to run toward the band, a security guard ran up to him from the wings and kicked him in the head, sending him flailing into the night and into the arms of an impending meeting with continued violence. Human life seems to have much less meaning here, as one has to SERIOUSLY be on the lookout for cars as you cross the street. The cars will NOT even slow down for you. That's a good one to remember IMMEDIATELY if you're going to visit China anytime soon.

We're off to Shanghai tomorrow, hopefully I will have nicer stories to tell from there...

We played a charity concert yesterday for the foundation "Gives", which supports orphanages in China. The state of orphanages over here is in deep dispair and I was glad to do my small part to help them raise money.


Our bassist, Lasse got sick and was in bed during our gig at night, so we got a sub and played some standards for a change, which was a lot of fun. Afterward we went to a jam session and played with some local musicians and the house brought two bottles of champagne over to our table. Club owners everywhere, take note!

We have a great local guide, a guy named Adam from D.C. who speaks Chinese like a local, and has the hookups for all the spots, food and otherwise. He took us to a late-night grill where I had some truly outstanding lamb, grilled eggplant and "pregnant fish", which is a local deep-fried dish which I especially liked. The locals were rowdily playing dice at the tables and playing drinking games as they ate, and as the place grew more empty, cat-sized rats came out of the corners to feast on the scraps they threw on the ground. It's a peaceful co-existence here, apparently which took a second to get used to. All told, a great evening and night!

Start of China-Japan tour...

After spending an unplanned first night in a bustling and filthy Hong Kong, (they close the border to mainland China at 12am, and my flight was late). I checked into the hotel at around 1.30am, and having caught my second wind, I decided to go out for a beer. I walked into a several-story bar-building with each floor featuring a different bar theme. The first door had a huge picture of english footballers on it, so I figured I would stop in there for a pint of the old lager. I turned around on my heels, however, after seeing a man (through about 8 packs of cigarette smoke) passed out with his face in a bowl of noodles surrounded by a lecherous brothel scene. Guess I didn't need that beer as much as I had thought after all. So after walking around for a bit, I sauntered back to the weirdly octoberfest-themed hotel and fell asleep like a baby at around 2.30am. If you ever have a bundle of cash burning a hole in your pocket, go to Hong Kong if you want to spend it fast! I wasn't even there 24 hours and I felt my (meager) life-savings dwindling away as I took care of my basic human necessities...
After waking up before my alarm at 6.50 am (guess I'm an early riser when I'm exhausted, go figure!?)I took the 8.25 am train to Guangzhou, a charming city in Canton. After a rehearsal and soundcheck with Pekka Pylkkänen's group (Pekka, sax, compositions, Samuli Mikkonen, piano and Lasse Lindgren on bass in addition to myself. Great to hang and play with some finns again, I've been missing the dry vibe and sardonic wit for some time now...
I'm now resting and dealing with my mild jet-lag in the hotel room before our performance tonight at the "senses" jazz club. Stay tuned, there's more to follow as we will be on tour for the duration of November...

My cd is available now on cd-baby.

André with a fan

The Monterey jazz festival was awesome! I was playing with vocalist Natasha Miller and her group. I heard amazing perfomances by Roy Hargrove and the RH factor, Richard Bona, Robert Glasper and his trio as well as many others. The programming of the festival has some real integrity, especially considering the large-scale factor of the festival. Their line-up was exceptionally outstanding, and I will definitely make a point of going again. Even if I'm not performing...

I've had some great weeks of performances with Dayna Stephens, Howard Wiley, Yosvany Terry, Marcus Shelby and I just posted a new myspace music page featuring music and pictures, with more sound files to follow shortly.