Blue Notes: Asian All-Stars Power Quartet and Jazzy Christmas

Last Sunday night Londoners got a rare opportunity to hear a band comprising four of Asia's finest jazzmen. Our own Eugene Pao on guitar, Singapore's Jeremy Monteiro on Nord C1 organ, Thailand's Hong Chanutr Techatana-nam on drums, and saxophonist Tots Tolentino from the Philippines are collectively the Asian Jazz All-Stars Power Quartet. They were appearing at one of London's top jazz venues, the Dean Street Pizza Express, as part of the annual London Jazz Festival.

It was a prestigious gig for which the quartet - reunited after a hiatus of several months - played three warm-up shows in Singapore. The encore will be played here on Friday at 8pm at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts' Amphitheatre.

"We've had the opportunity to add a few new things to our repertoire and to knock the cobwebs off the older ones," Monteiro says over the phone from London.

Additions to a typical set list include original tunes from the members, among them Pao's Star Trek referential Make It So, which takes its title from a catchphrase used in the hit series. "There's also an older tune of Eugene's called Offside [first released on 1999's This Window on Sony] which we give a nice viewing of with this bunch of guys, and a couple of my tunes, Life Goes On, and Oasis which I wrote with Ernie Watts," says Monteiro.

The All-Stars have a classic organ trio plus saxophone line-up, with Monteiro taking care of the bass with his left hand, but their style is modern, as close to the music of Larry Goldings and Joey de Francesco as that of Jimmy Smith and Richard "Groove" Holmes.

For anybody able to make it down to Singapore for December 15, Monteiro's next big show, with a very different cast of musicians, should also be well worth catching.