Christophe Lier, who performs with his Trio at Hong Kong's Jazz to Kill mini-festival, which starts on Wednesday at the Arts Centre (full story, see Page 4), was an engineer when he first came here three years ago.
But he was an engineer with a jazz man's heart: he had been playing jazz at nights in bars across the region, while working days at his desk.
It wasn't until he got here that he decided to turn professional, and he has hardly looked back since.
Lier will play mainly his own compositions, be-bop and African style jazz, on stage on Friday.
Hong Kong's scene is small, he says, but accessible. 'We have the Jazz Club, and there is always a bar that wants jazz music, even though that changes every year.' The Jazz to Kill festival hopes to attract serious jazz fans, prepared to pay to hear the music.
Rivals on warpath The battle between the French and the Germans for our cinephile hearts goes on this week with the rival screenings of two excellent films which both confirm the national stereotypes of their respective countries.
Or rather the stereotypical obsessions of those countries. Aguirre, Wrath of God, which is screening at the Arts Centre tomorrow night at 8pm, is the first of Werner Herzog's extraordinary epics about eccentrics determined to overcome impossible odds in savage lands.