Stellar cast: Tan's swinging debut brings together some of the best names in the Hong Kong jazz scene
Hong Kong isn't known as a city of swingin' hepcats, but it does play host to a small, surprisingly busy jazz scene and a newly launched international jazz festival. It's against this homespun backdrop that the album Raw Jazz emerges, with a kind of indomitable energy that's entirely fitting for the place in which it was born. Introducing Singaporean vocalist Hanjin Tan, a producer and composer of Cantonese pop by day, this low-frills, high-moxie album is a collection of 11 jazz standards, each recorded in a single take along with the help of local jazz luminaries Skip...
