The Sparrow Quartet at Cotton Club

Stop reading. Call JZ Club. Find out how you can buy tickets for tonight's Sparrow Quartet gig. They were excellent last night at a packed Cotton Club. It's so nice to see skilled musicians (including one who many consider to be the best ever at his instrument of choice) having a great time making music together. And Abigail Washburn, Bela Fleck, Casey Driessen and Ben Sollee really did seem to be having a great time up on stage -- they played for more than three hours. You can get a taste from the video above. It's not the entire song, unfortunately. This wasn't by design -- it's just what happens when you rely on batteries with the brand name White Elephant. (We have another, longer, video clip, too -- but YouTube is being slow with that one. it's up now. View it above.)

Not sure what the seating arrangement will be like at JZ, but we got to Cotton Club around three hours early because we are losers were told we couldn't reserve seats ahead of time. So we chose a booth that looked nice and sat down. Moments later, we were told we couldn't sit there -- because that table was reserved. Huh? (There wasn't a "reserved" sign on the table.) We eventually sorted things out with the bar's super-cool, super-laid-back owner (sorry for raising our voice, Greg!) and we got our booth, but just warning you to be prepared for anything, as is generally the rule in China.

After that, however, service -- and, most importantly, the sound -- were all fantastic at Cotton Club. Try to get to JZ tonight if you can.

Got photos from last night? We'd love to see them. Email them to photos at shanghaiist.com or upload them to Flickr with the tag "shanghaiist."

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