Today is the International Jazz Day and I had a sort-of International Jazz month of April as I had a family vacation/cruise in Australia. I visited Cafe Stritch the night before I flew to see the Essiet Essiet Quartet featuring the fabulous Sylvia Cuenca on drums. And as the cruise (Royal Caribbean International's Radiance of the Seas - 8 day Queensland) was mainly geared towards old folks, I got to hear a lot of jazz by ways of oldies/easy-listening music. Of course there won't be any "pure"/free jazz (borrowing the terms from "La La Land") as it's opposite to the relaxing atmosphere. I am amazed by how versatile these cruiseship musicians are! Almost all of them could play some jazz standards and improvise over the changes. I could hear them relying on a few "cliche" licks but that's par for the course. (I would consider myself graduated from the Jazz High School if I play anywhere near that!) Over that week I hear almost every tunes I practices: Blue Bossa, Summertime, Autumn Leaves, Fly Me to the Moon, Satin Doll...... performed by:
- a guitar/violin duo: they handled the "easy listening department." For the first few days the guitarist strictly accompany the violinist who would take improvised solo. However, one night the violinist was MIA (I guess he went to rehearse with the Radiance of the Seas orchestra at that time for the Tango show later that night) and the guitarist played over accompaniment from his phone and I finally heard him soloing. It was very enjoyable.
- a guitar/singer duo: they sang oldies, country and standards
- a 4 man band: they could easily be a Eagles cover band but they play everything from the Rolling Stones to jazz.
After the cruise ended I stayed at Sydney for that Tuesday night and I visited Australia's most famous jazz club: 505. Even though its website mentioned it's Old School Funk Band's night, I figure I should just give it a try and the band was way more than OK! Everyone was playing with a ton of energy. The bass player surely knew secret of laying down a good funky groove. And everyone launched off from there. It was not "pure" but definitely "jazz", and high-quality one.
Gotta praise Air New Zealand for playing local jazz cats on their in-flight entertainment, including Ron Samsom's Ace Tone, The Rodger Fox Big Band Plays New Zealand's X and Phil Broadhurst Quintet's Panacea. I enjoy them a lot on my way home.
And I conclude the month of jazz with another visit to Cafe Stritch for the SJZ Camp Faculty Sextet. (This is the San Jose Jazz camp, not the Stanford Jazz Workshop camp that I attended before) The show started with a sad announcement though: local jazz bassist and SJSU professor John Shifflett has just passed away. The members of the sextet were all local musicians who were close to Professor Shifflett and we had a moment of silence before they played a set dedicated to him. I finally get a chance to see Brian Ho on piano/organ. (Saw his name listed on many local gigs before, including one at the Casino, but never get to see his performance) Trumpeter John Worley is a staple of the local jazz scene. So is guitarist Hristo Vitchev. It's a wonderful thing that we have so many world-class jazz musicians living, teaching and playing right in the (figurative) neighborhood!
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