zaiShanghai

Nothing keeps Shanghai's JZ Club from appear­ing to be a fairly typ­i­cal jazz bar: it is located in a base­ment, the place is crowded, the band plays, solos swing, vir­tu­oso musi­cians give it all they have, and the audience—seemingly unaware of the music—chats loudly. And then Coco Zhao hits the stage.

He wears a bright red shirt, fash­ion­able trousers and sport shoes—nothing about his out­fit says "jazz" in any par­tic­u­lar way—and then he just…sings, pep­per­ing the lyrics with heavy scat solos. Scatting is sec­ond nature to Coco, which may sur­prise new­com­ers to Chinese jazz, and its what makes his sound. His inter­pre­ta­tions of stan­dards like "It Had To Be You," "No More Blues," and "Boy From Ipanema" sound sur­pris­ingly nat­ural, even fresh, enliven­ing even the biggest jazz reper­toire clichés with his a deeply res­o­nant voice, wide range and fre­quent scat­ting and depar­tures from the pen­ta­tonic scale.

So, how did Coco Zhao come to sing jazz? He started play­ing clas­si­cal piano at a young age and went to music school, where he heard jazz for the first time and fell in love with it. Ever since, he's been per­form­ing jazz stan­dards, which, given that he has the skills, tal­ent and charisma to sing any­thing he likes, is too bad. In addi­tion to the stan­dards, Coco could be singing orig­i­nal and mod­ern com­po­si­tions, or rein­tro­duc­ing songs that have been for­got­ten, hav­ing never  made it into the Jazz Standard Real Books.

Coco seems to be the kind of artist who you can eas­ily chat with dur­ing breaks, so I wasn't sur­prised when he came up to me. I must have been quite notice­able with my blond hair and my cam­era, sit­ting right in front of the stage—I imag­ine Coco wouldn't have approached me so openly if I were a typ­i­cal middle-aged Chinese man—but his nat­ural kind­ness gave the impres­sion that he was talk­ing to me as he would to the green­gro­cer.

- Where are you from?
– Holland
– Ah great!
– You know Holland?
– Yes, I go there every year! What brings you here?
– I am study­ing here for a year, with NYU’s study abroad pro­gram.
– Ah New York University! You live in New York?
– Not yet. Have you been there?
– Many times!
– You seem to travel a lot
– Yes, I believe that the more I travel to Europe and America, the bet­ter I know what I am doing.

Perhaps Coco's trav­els will, some­day, take him beyond the stan­dards, but until then, it's a plea­sure to hear him give them a Shanghai spin.

For those inter­ested: Coco will per­form at JZ Club again on October 30^th.