From Manhattan To Shanghai

t will be modeled on the nonprofit organization’s Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in Manhattan, but rather than look out on Central Park the Shanghai version’s glass wall will face Holy Trinity Cathedral.

The Shanghai branch will be JALC’s second outside the U.S. after the club it built in Doha last year. In preparation, JALC brought a jazz quintet to Shanghai led by trumpeter Dominick Farinacci for three days of performances at the end of July. 

The chairman of the Shanghai Bund Investment Co. Ltd., Zhou Haiying, booked the group to play at Union Church, which is not far from where the new club will be located in a government-owned development project called The Central.

The project will cost about $734 million in total and mimic the world’s oldest shopping mall, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in central Milan.

Farinacci has played in Doha, where he said “the audience is mostly expats and some natives. We have to make sure our music is at such a high level that it’s able to communicate with people’s heart and soul no matter whether we speak the same verbal language.”

The quintet managed to work some popular Chinese songs into their repertoire for the Shanghai gig. Derek Kwan, the vice president of concerts and tours for JALC, told China Daily that the club would operate six nights a week when it opens in 2016, with Mondays off. He also hopes to reach out to educational programs in the city in order to “build the awarenes of jazz as a music genre.”