Playing a more old-time, backdoor Chicago den, Fairmont’s Ink Bar is Singapore’s most rewarding jazz haunt
When Jazz@Southbridge moved to 7atenine last year, loyalties were tested. Trading in its motley, ragtime leanings for florid pink tones and leisure centre-turquoise stools was always going to be a big ask for the club’s long-held, beardy purists who like their jazz in more underground, sullen settings. Jazz doesn’t need plush environs. While the standard of music was upheld, the move felt like a saddening Disneyfication of a fondly cherished musical institution. The faithful wept.
Where, then, for Singapore’s lone-wandering, head-bopping jazzbos? Playing a more old-time, backdoor Chicago den is the Fairmont’s Ink Bar, which, for our money, is Singapore’s most rewarding jazz haunt. And, weirdly, also its most unsung. Sleek, but with a kind of closeted, smoky hue in the tradition of all great jazz labs, Ink has its own lick of neon but is otherwise entirely oil-black and makes a pleasingly blues-y backdrop for local jazz grandee Jeremy Monteiro and friends to hold sway most nights of the week.
At the bar, a small roster of cocktails are perfectly rendered and wickedly strong. Gin-based classic The Aviation (here, cocktail geeks will note, made with the once left-out crème de violette), made an unapologetically powerful first sip, the tart lemon juice grounded with faint almond-y undercurrents of the cherry maraschino liqueur. Much more bitter was the Italian classic Negroni, which perhaps showed too much Campari but still adequately enabled the Martin Miller’s four-year gin.
The only dud was from the local cocktail list, the Little India – ‘like drinking a Thai green curry’, said a friend, and he was right. Back to form was the easy-sipping Hemingway Daiquiri, which had a neatly balanced sweetness and was, like the jazz, both subdued and dapper. Alexander Barlow
See our list of Hot Tables in Singapore
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Transport
Nearby Stations: City Hall
Bus Lines: 14, 16, 36, 111, 128, 130, 131, 133, 162, 502, 518
Telephone 6431 6156
Admission price $18.00
Open Band performances
Mon-Thu 9.30pm-12.30am
Fri & Sat 9.45pm-12.45am
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I am guessing the author of this review has never actually ventured into a backdoor Chicago jazz den. Or a New York One. Or a London one. Blujazz would be better described as a 'den'. The Jazz scene in Singapore has some truly talented musicians (Jeremy Monteiro certainly is that!) but the genre seems to just lack critical mass in terms of appeal. It just feels like the audience is not really there . The soul is missing. That makes the gigs desperately unatmospheric compared to the US or UK where the engagement between audience and band is so much more profound. Sad but true. And Ink Bar itself is an 80s looking throwback with under-lit floors, and metal chain curtains separating the booths(and with the stinkiest toilets I have enountered in a 5* hotel venue). Jazz doesnt need polished 80s venues. It needs initimacy and proximity to the music. It needs to be about the music and not the venue. Ink is definitely not the place for that. Drinks and service are good tho (altho at $18 ++ for a cocktail you are in for an expensive night, even if you do get a bowl of equally 80s bombay mix!)
Posted on Mon 07 Mar 2011 17:13:06