Cao Zhen

caozhen0806@126.com

IN its ninth year, the OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival opened Friday night at B10 Live in an exciting way: Danish percussion queen Marilyn Mazur gave a 30-minute percussion show, pouring her magic out through several rarely seen instruments and then adding her characteristic touch to the Makiko Hirabayashi Trio’s jazz tunes with Japanese pianist Makiko Hirabayashi and double bass-player Klavs Hovman.

A graduate from The Royal Danish Academy of Music and also an autodidact of multiple instruments, Mazur is one of the world’s most prestigious female drummers and percussionists. Although she is famous for having collaborated with jazz icon Miles Davis in the 1980s, she has also formed and participated in various distinctive projects focusing on her own music.

Her friend Hirabayashi’s piano performance was fresh, easy listening with crisp and fluid tone quality. The Berklee College of Music graduate has received critical acclaim both in Europe, where she resides, and in her home country, Japan. Elements of Asian music, Nordic moods, jazz and classical music are all molded uncontrivedly into an intriguing sound of the trio’s own.

The OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival, running until Oct. 20 (Sunday), has invited 16 groups of musicians from 11 countries to Shenzhen. In addition to Mazur, another jazz legend whose show should not be missed is 86-year-old Japanese bassist Isao Suzuki, who has been named among the “20 best jazz musicians in the world” by Radio Jazz International of Switzerland. The “jazz godfather” will grace the B10 Live stage Oct. 18 (Friday).

The festival will also see Click#15, a popular Chinese band which was featured on Chinese reality show “The Big Band” in the summer. The funk band said that before appearing on the TV show, their gigs drew few people, and now, they’re well on their way to stardom.

Surely, the tickets to their show tomorrow will soon sell out.

Like its previous years, the last night of the festival will feature an improvisation show. After performing their own gigs this week, Akosh Szelevényi, Peter Ajtai, Szilveszter Miklòs, Peter Evans, Kazutoki Umezu, Takayuki Kato, Raiga Hayashi, Hamid Drake, Pat Thomas, Vladimir Chekasin and Vladimir Tarasov will gather Oct. 20 (Sunday) to close the extravaganza.

Full schedule and ticketing can be found on http://www.octloftjazz.com.