活动推荐 | 新的一周，新的爵士音乐演出放送！

Guitarist Greg Smith is the band captain of 'The Royal Hombres' and the music director of the famed music pub 'Cotton Club'  in Shanghai as well. He has rich experience in performance.The Royal Hombres has more than ten years of performing experience. It has become the oldest and most well-known blues band in Shanghai, their music reflects an eclectic mix of blues, jazz and funk. Yiko is a Blues and Jazz singer based in Shanghai. She graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2014, majoring in vocal performance.In the years since she's returned to shanghai, she've been house vocalist Cotton Club，and various other venues all around china.

Mauritian multi instrumentalist Jhonny Joseph, known as the “drumming Buddha”, now brings us to Gelà to reveal another one of his talents. Here the depths of his spirit find expression through his gentle voice and fingers caressing the piano with absolute freedom. It’s a rare combination of high quality music, passion and a very happy sound. The music is captivating and purifying. It makes audiences smile and move and groove.

Gelà is the name of a stunning village up in a Bulgarian mountain, where nature is wild and lush, almost untouched. It won Jhonny’s heart at first sight. The way it’s pronounced also sounds as “gai la” (happy here and now) in Mauritian Creole or the generous joy giver 给乐 in chinese. These are the vibes that best describe Jhonny Joseph’s Gelà.

Voision Xi & Little Happiness Group：

This is the sound that you need the most. A real music lover is singing out the realness with her purist melodies, her heart and her soul. An extreme obsession with music, a unique voice with clear articulation and the sincereness on the stage make the most of her qualities. Having developed a habit of listening to music ever since a very young age, in the guidance of spirit of Jazz, Voision Xi keeps digging music, stacking up her listening experience and continuously trying to cooperate with standout musicians in different genre.

Graduating in media, she enjoys photography, broadcast and many other artistic lifestyles. Her daily work is music performance planning and promotion. She founded her own Jazz band – Little Happiness Group with several outstanding Jazz professionals in Shanghai, 2015. During a 4-year live performance trip, they’ve showed up their skills and talents in many different bars, clubs in different cities for the likes of Wooden Box Café in Shanghai, JZ Club, On Stage, Heyday, House of Blues and Jazz, Le Petite Fontaine, Woof Woof, Lab Whiskey Bar, The Market, Long Time No Read Book Store, Kerry Parkside, Shanghai REEL, Witch House in Taipei, Sappho Live Jazz, fRUITYSPACE in Beijing, East Shore Café, DDC, Meeting Jazz Club in Xi’an, Vinoteka in Chengdu and Chongqing, MOFUN Loft in Suzhou and Blankspace in Changzhou. They were invited to attend JZ Festival Shanghai, JZ Spring Festival, Simple Life Festival, Sofar Sounds Shanghai, Earth Hour WWF and other artistic and environmental performances.

Meanwhile, she’s been active beyond the realm of Jazz. Voision Xi featured the voice in the album ‘Maiden Voyage’ by Chinese rapper Wootacc in 2014. A year later she performed on stage with Chinese rapper J￾Fever and Chinese American producer/guitarist Soulspeak, attended musical activities like Echo Music Festival, Eastsea Festival and featured in the recording of J-Fever’s album ‘Lipsticks, now’. In 2017, she joined Nomad Studio Project led by rapper Lu1 and they’ve been planning, recording and performing together. She also featured in the 1st beat tape from Eating Music and advertising music of Quaker Oats, Oreo etc. Voision Xi’s humbly making her own step up into the next level around Jazz music, finding and building the sound that belongs to herself. ‘natural warmth and touching vocals’, ‘extremely sensitive to melodies’, ‘another potential singer’ are the main comments from her listeners.

In early 2018, Voision Xi invited young Chinese jazz pioneers Zhang Xiongguan, Li Shihai and Xiao Jun with the band to produce and record their debut EP ‘DEBUT’ - a collection of covers all given the Little Happiness Group treatment. It is more than just a collection of covers but an exceptional piece of modern Jazz. You can skip this EP if you intend to a full cover album. Yet if you are looking for something unusual but sincere, you just arrived at the right station. The EP collected five of Voision’s favourite tracks, was released on 29th September of 2018 by Eating Music, including different art illustrations for each single. Co-created with Her Chocolate Lab, DEBUT became a diligent piece of  synthetic art with fresh multisensory experience inside. Transmitting in hustle and flow, Little Happiness Group’s music is natural filter in your ears with the sound of flowing rivers, blowing winds, the pictures of stars in the cosmos and everything else in your stretched imagination. Starting from ‘DEBUT’, you are welcome to the first chapter of vocalist Voision Xi. In June, 2019, Voision Xi feauring with Fei NX and Farragol released an urban-vibing R&B single ‘Delay, She-fly’. Since 2020, more collab singles like ‘ Sleepy Winter’, ’Sandclock’, ’Childhood’ and ‘Same Smile’ have reflected the potential of her melody and lyrics. More music projects of her will emerge in the future. Stay tuned. 

Huang Jianyi was the first person in China to receive a master's degree in jazz piano. After graduating from Shanghai Conservatory of Music, he stayed and became the consultant director of the orchestra department. He started studying jazz pianoin 2000 while he was in Berklee College of Music, and also had the chance to study further with jazz pianist Stanley Cowell in Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Tom Peng NewGrass Band delivers heartfelt bluegrass music to JZ Shanghai. Their lineup of instruments and singers will present authentic American folk music to Shanghai audiences. The complex interplay of the fiddle and guitar, ringing sound of the banjo, blazing mandolin runs, and the high lonesome vocal harmonies recalls emotions from small country towns half a world away. NewGrass Band plays music that is exciting, plaintive, heartwarming, and most of all… Human.