Byreputation, Ling Wei (凌威) doesn’t come across as a jazz fan. But the 56-year-old self-professed “rock ’n’ roller” and owner of the Roxy chain of rock-themed bars and nightclubs says, “I’ve always loved jazz music.”
Roxy Jazz, which opens tonight, is Ling’s second attempt at a jazz club. His first venture, Feel More Jazz, located on Roosevelt Road (羅斯福路), quickly folded after opening in 1991 when construction for the MRT’s Danshui-Xindian line began.
Ling seemed at ease and in a good mood earlier
this week when showing the Taipei Times around
this latest addition to the Roxy brand, located near
the corner of Jianguo South (建國南) and Heping East
(和平東) roads.
He says the club is designed so jazz lovers can have a comfortable place “to share the music.” The space, which holds around 65 persons, feels intimate and homey. The room is filled with plush Ikea sofas and lounge chairs. The stage, equipped with a drum kit, upright piano, double bass and a few amplifiers, is low to the ground and close to the audience. A bar at the back will serve food.
Listening to records is pure pleasure for Ling, a former radio DJ, and he brings that sensibility to the venue. Audiophiles will drool over the room’s boutique stereo speakers made by the German company Duevel, which cost a cool NT$1 million. Ling says, half-jokingly, that another reason for starting the club was to find a home for the speakers.
Live music from local musicians, however, will be the main attraction. Roxy Jazz currently has performers scheduled on average for three nights a week.
Tonight’s grand opening party features a special performance by a one-off modern jazz quartet organized by pianist Andrew Page, the music director of the American Club in Taipei. The lineup includes Taichung-based French bassist Cyrille Briegel, Italian drummer Pietro Valente, and saxophonist and composer Miguel Fernandez of Barcelona.
Tomorrow the venue hosts Taiwanese pianist Amanda Wu (吳苡嫣), who plays modern jazz standards as well as originals sung in Mandarin. She shares the stage with saxophonist Alejandro Chiabrando of Argentina.
When the musicians break, house DJs will spin “classic jazz vinyl,” reflecting Ling’s tastes, which he describes as anything from Blue Note Records.
Ling says he’s optimistic that Roxy Jazz will stand the test of time, unlike The Other Side, a dance club he opened in the East District (東區) in July that folded because of high rent and a lack of a “clear goal.”
Roxy Jazz is open every day from 9pm to 4am and charges a NT$300 food or drink minimum on nights with musical performances.
US President Donald Trump may have hoped for an impromptu talk with his old friend Kim Jong-un during a recent trip to Asia, but analysts say the increasingly emboldened North Korean despot had few good reasons to join the photo-op. Trump sent repeated overtures to Kim during his barnstorming tour of Asia, saying he was “100 percent” open to a meeting and even bucking decades of US policy by conceding that North Korea was “sort of a nuclear power.” But Pyongyang kept mum on the invitation, instead firing off missiles and sending its foreign minister to Russia and Belarus, with whom it
When Taiwan was battered by storms this summer, the only crumb of comfort I could take was knowing that some advice I’d drafted several weeks earlier had been correct. Regarding the Southern Cross-Island Highway (南橫公路), a spectacular high-elevation route connecting Taiwan’s southwest with the country’s southeast, I’d written: “The precarious existence of this road cannot be overstated; those hoping to drive or ride all the way across should have a backup plan.” As this article was going to press, the middle section of the highway, between Meishankou (梅山口) in Kaohsiung and Siangyang (向陽) in Taitung County, was still closed to outsiders
Many people noticed the flood of pro-China propaganda across a number of venues in recent weeks that looks like a coordinated assault on US Taiwan policy. It does look like an effort intended to influence the US before the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) over the weekend. Jennifer Kavanagh’s piece in the New York Times in September appears to be the opening strike of the current campaign. She followed up last week in the Lowy Interpreter, blaming the US for causing the PRC to escalate in the Philippines and Taiwan, saying that as
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a dystopian, radical and dangerous conception of itself. Few are aware of this very fundamental difference between how they view power and how the rest of the world does. Even those of us who have lived in China sometimes fall back into the trap of viewing it through the lens of the power relationships common throughout the rest of the world, instead of understanding the CCP as it conceives of itself. Broadly speaking, the concepts of the people, race, culture, civilization, nation, government and religion are separate, though often overlapping and intertwined. A government
RSS