Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

10/10/2004, Kobe Jazz Street (festival)

I went to the Kobe Jazz Street, a jazz festival that opens up 18 Kobe jazz clubs for five hours, for a flat fee of ¥4600 (≈$46).  Each club has a different show every hour.  The shows are all only 40 or 50 minutes, so you get a relatively short taste of several jazz groups in different clubs.  Most groups are from Japan, but they did import a few groups from Sweden, Germany, and other places.

Here's a rough run-down of what I saw.

1. New Orleans style jazz at a club called Day By Day.  Everyone was in costumes.  For the last number, a cute woman in her 50s or 60s in costume (including a wild American flag necktie and a top hat) walked around with parasel and tried to dance with people in the audience.
2. A piano-bass-drum trio with a singer at a club called Restaurant Sone.  Everyone liked the singer a lot, but I thought he used too much vibrato for jazz.  He spoke about each composer before each song.
3. An excellent vibes-piano-bass-drum quartet at a club called Midnight Sun.  I loved the pianist.  I'm told the vibist (also excellent) is the most famous in Japan.
4. New Orleans style jazz at a club called AMZ.  A really great pianist, among others.
5. An outstanding sax-piano-bass-drum quartet called Echoes Of Swing at a club called Green Dolphin.  It was the best I saw.  They were from Germany.  I made a couple friends there.  We went for coffee and then dinner afterward.

Here's the outside of a club called Sone.

Here's the outside of a club called Midnight sun.  I took these pictures partly to help me find them again in the future.

Here's the vibes-piano-bass-drum combo that I liked so much.  The picture is off center because they asked me to put away my camera just as I was taking the picture.

Here's the New Orleans style combo I saw at AMZ.

And here's the German group, Echos Of Swing, at a club called Green Dolphin.

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