Blue Notes: Howard McCrary Jazz Orchestra

A new ensemble - The Howard McCrary Jazz Orchestra - will be making their first appearance in concert on Tuesday at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre with a programme entitled "Peace & All That Jazz".

Singer, keyboardist, writer and arranger McCrary - who is based in Hong Kong but has a career résumé which includes working with Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and Chaka Khan - has now worked at some point with most of the leading lights of the local jazz scene. He wanted to pull them all together for a single project.

He also has a message he wants to put across. "I am a jazz musician, and I have also found peace through meditation, so I wanted to share my music and also reach out to share the joy and the peace that I have found," he says.

Helping McCrary do that will be local musical heroes Eugene Pao on guitar and Ted Lo on keyboards; a crack rhythm section of Anthony Fernandes on drums and Sylvain Gagnon on bass; saxophone virtuoso Blaine Whittaker, and a 17-piece orchestral section under the baton of music director Justin Siu, who has also written the orchestral arrangements.

Also helping McCrary, whose background as a vocalist is in gospel, will be guest singers Ginger Kwan, Jennifer Palor and Gretchell Yeung, singing a programme which he calls "a fusion of classics and standards with innovative orchestration".

For McCrary, who since coming to Hong Kong has worked mostly in a small group context or behind the scenes for other artists, this is a chance to step into the spotlight.