"Sax in Shanghai" (not to be confused with a certain blog) is a concert and workshop given by the London-based National Saxophone Choir and it will take place on Thursday at JZ Club from 5-8pm. The event, organized through the JZ School, will feature about 20 saxophonists who regularly play with the NSC as well as any and all sax players who attend the workshop. During the workshop, which runs from 5 to about 6:30, the NSC members will invite everyone to play and prepare a few pieces that will be performed by everyone together at the concert. The concert itself will start at 7pm and will include a short feature by the saxophone group from the Shanghai Conservatory led by Zhang Xiaolu. more ›

Strumming her banjo and singing in English and Chinese, Abigail Washburn performed traditional American music last night at the Cotton Club with three esteemed bandmates. Playing a mix of bluegrass, country, gospel and old-time music, the former Beijing resident was joined by eight-time Grammy winner Béla Fleck who is considered the best banjo player in the world. With Casey Driessen on the fiddle and Ben Sollee on the cello, the packed club audience enjoyed a musical treat of a quality rarely found in Shanghai. more ›

Nestled under plane trees and a thatched roof on Fenyang Lu near the Shanghai Conservatory of Music is a shop unlike any other in the city. Most passersby mistake it for a teahouse, but free tea is only the beginning of what one can savor in its timeless confines. For this place is Shanghai's first and only shop devoted specifically to the appreciation and study of the world's oldest written musical tradition, an instrument known to moderns as the guqin（古琴）, or "ancient stringed instrument." more ›