Results tagged “houseofblues”

Lots of news from the House of Blues and Jazz in Shanghai: The latest band featured there wraps up their final few weeks at this revered and relatively long-lived jazz venue; also the club gets ready to move to its new digs over at the bund. Theo Croker and band The current band at the House of Blues and Jazz has been there already for many weeks, and they're doing great. It's a dynamic group...

Sunday night we headed down to the House of Blues and Jazz to check out the new band from New Orleans, “Continuum”. They started a couple weeks ago but already have their groove on, with an easy stage presence that shows they are comfortable playing together and a group sound that is starting to come together nicely. Front man Thaddeus Ford, who plays the trumpet and acts as MC, is a 6th generation New Orleans jazz musician, and has about four different names for each of the musicians onstage as he announces them. He and the vocalist Evelyn are actually the only ones originally from New Orleans, as their band was originally scheduled to come play later in the year but was recently contacted by the club and asked if they could come earlier. Because of the short notice they were not able to use their regular band members, but were still able to bring some solid players to fill in on piano and drums. In fact they were never able to line up a bass player before arriving in town, so they picked up Michael Brownell, a bass player who has been based in town for the last half-year or so now. In any case they are creating a good atmosphere already, mixing some jazz standards in with the funk, soul and R&B where Evelyn really shines.

Last night, like every Sunday night, would normally be Coco Zhao’s regular show at JZ with his Possicobilities band. However, unlike most other Sunday nights, last night Coco himself wasn’t able to make it due to illness, but his band faithfully played without their fearless leader. Later in the evening they were joined by a few other musicians including Erica Li (of JZ regular Wednesday night fame) and Fox the sax/flute man.

With visions of sugar plum fairies dancing through their heads, the -Ists began to get into that holiday mood. Well, some did.

Or the better question is: What would you suggest a visitor to Shanghai do if they only had one night to spend in the city? (And, no, your first stop can't be a travel agency so they can extend their stay.)

Too often, we hear Shanghai residents bemoaning the lack of good live music, especially when compared to our neighbor to the north. Sure, we all love a good Filipino cover band every now and then, but ...