Alessandro Galati trio's gig caps Jazz World Live Series 2014
Hong Kong plays host to two essential jazz gigs this week: the Hong Kong debut on Tuesday of Alessandro Galati and his trio at Youth Square Y-Theatre in Chai Wan, and the launch on Thursday of Blaine Whittaker's Strange Universe album at Backstage Live.
The Galati concert is the finale of the Jazz World Live Series 2014, an ambitious programme devised by Jazz World's Clarence Chang which began in January, and saw at least one performance by an international jazz artist in each of eight months of the past year.
Four Jazz World gigs were staged in October. One of the few blanks was November, because Chang decided not to compete with the North Sea Jazz Festival, which was scheduled to take place from November 14 to 16 in Hong Kong - but cancelled.
Chang's choice of the Galati Trio to close the 2014 series reflects his personal love of Italian piano jazz, but the other artists he presented this year addressed a broad palette of tastes.
In February we had the Larry Carlton Trio; in April the Robben Ford Band; in June the duo of Max Ionata and Dado Moroni; in September Hiromi Uehara's Trio Project and The Oz Noy Trio; and in October The Eddie Gomez Quartet, Masters of Bass, the Dominic Miller Band, and the Alex Sipiagin Quintet.
It's likely that not all of those performances made money and, in addition to guitarist Miller, there were some diversions into areas of music some distance from jazz, which were presumably intended to subsidise some of the loss-making gigs. However, Chang is a man of diverse tastes and he obviously also likes these artists - singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop in July, rock band The Aristocrats in August, pop instrumentalists guitarist Kotaro Oshio and ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro in September.
Chang has earned a finale he will particularly enjoy. Italian pianists who have featured in past Jazz World Series concerts, apart from Moroni, include Danilo Rea, Enrico Pieranunzi and Giovanni Mirabassi. Chang describes Italian jazz as "the main dish" at the Jazz World CD shop on Wellington Street.