Dressed like a spiv in an all-white suit with a matching hat and rectangular shades, Zhang Fei (
Though he was upstaged musically by Japan's Akiko, Zhang flattered and charmed his way through a one-hour set at People's Park (市民廣場) in Taichung on Saturday for a crowd estimated by organizers to number 100,000, but was in reality less than half of that.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
His decision to rely on repartee was a good one as singing was clearly not his forte. While he did no serious damage to the six songs he did cover off his album When I Fall in Love, further exposure of his vocal talents without the aid of studio help would have been pushing it.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
Opening with karaoke favorite Strangers in the Night, Zhang did a fairly good impression of Frank Sinatra and was clearly buoyed by the crowd's generous reception of the song. There was genuine warmth on a clear, cool but pleasant evening.
After breaking the ice, Zhang "rapped" with the compere of the show for five to 10 minutes, before launching into his next song, Around the World. This set a pattern of
alternatively crooning and sweet-talking the audience. It was courtship.
Zhang joked about his actress friends who, he said, had come to see his show but were staying at different first-class hotels in the city, so he could visit them afterward without being caught out. He said his only regret about performing was that the live televised performance would draw regular viewers of his primetime Saturday night program (on at the same time on another channel).
(I Believe) When I Fall in Love was his big song of the night and though it didn't come close to sending shivers up the spine, it was a solid reworking of the old Sinatra classic. A 15-piece backing band and mini orchestra smoothed over the cracks in Zhang's vocal range.
Nat King Cole's Misty and Walking my Baby were performed without a hitch and Volare provided the big ending. Zhang even cajoled the audience into singing along with him during the main refrains.
Overall it was a creditable performance that won over the converted and probably made a few new friends.
Zhang said he had sold 80,000 copies of his album and said this had pleased him, as he had promised before the LP's release to wear a thong in public if he sold over 100,000. He told the crowd he used to entertain in Taichung pubs at the start of his career, so to headline at the city's jazz festival was like a hero's return, he said.
After Zhang, however, the audience was treated to the real thing: a one-and-half hour concert from Japanese songbird Akiko and her jazz band. She took a while to warm up as the sound levels were out of sync and and there was some annoying feedback. After these problems were eliminated, however, she seemed to find her voice.
And what a sweet voice it was. Different in range and tone from black US artists like Bessie Smith and Dinah Washington, or even white jazz singers such as Diana Krall, Akiko was at her best singing her own compositions, which were thoughtfully constructed and tender in delivery. She scat-sang, soared and hit every note.
The talented, young singer debuted with Girl Talk in 2001 and has since released five well-received albums. On Saturday, she sang a couple of Duke Ellington classics, got into a groove with a few rhythm 'n' blues-tinged numbers and lulled everyone into mellow appreciation with the slower songs.
Douglas Habecker, the editor-in-chief of Compass magazine in Taichung, said the jazz festival was a success because it combined popular and specialized entertainment.
"It was a good combination, Zhang Fei brought it home for the local crowd and the foreign performers provided more of an education. Last year, it was more of a pure jazz experience, this year there is more of a local twist," Habecker said.
This coming weekend, there will be more free jazz, with The New Decision and Metamorphosis Jazztet in the afternoon. The evening concert on Saturday in People's Park will feature Round Midnight and the outstanding Japanese jazz pianist Takashi Matsunaga.
On Sunday, Semiscon, the Japanese Jazz Quartet and some jam sessions on Jinguo Boulevard will be the major attractions. See www.fallinjazz.com.tw for more details.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
RSS