GALLERY: Savoy JAZZFest’s Connected Performed One of the Best Jazz Concerts We’ve Heard in This Country

What a gig! Here’s our report.

Time runs fast. Four years ago, we covered the first Savoy JAZZFest at the historical venue of the Savoy Theater next to the Esplanade Park in Helsinki, but it feels like yesterday.

This year at the fifth festival we focused our coverage on one concert that we thought could be nice but, in fact, turned out to be one the best jazz performances this writer has witnessed live. (Some may call this type of music jazz fusion, but we think that what started as “pure jazz” has evolved in so many directions that these days “jazz” is just an umbrella term for all kinds of funky, soulful and swinging improvisational music.)

Bassist Richie Goods, vibraphonist Chien Chien Lu, drummer Tim “Smithsoneon” Smith, pianist Miki Hayama and guitarist Quintin Zoto left an indelible effect on the listeners with the group they formed during the pandemic in the United States of America and decided to call Connected.

While Chien Chien Lu is a Taiwanese-born lady who later moved to New York, and who’s been called the “vibraphone rising star,” and who already was a rising comet as a classical percussionist in Asia, Goods is known for having played with Alicia Keys, Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera, Lenny White and others.

So, yeah, that sounds good on paper and billboard, but on stage at the Savoy, they immersed into stone-cold-bold original compositions and skillfully reimagined the cover songs.

There’s something extraterrestrial in the way Lu embraces the vibes. She smoothly switches between two and four mallets (holding two in each hand). She’s observant; acknowledgeable of who’s doing what; precise like a painter of realism but wild like Picasso.

Interestingly, she oozes calm while playing on an album. On stage, she pours energy and elegance into every number.

Some of the group’s hauntingly beautiful originals included “Water” that Lu said is based on a thought that whatever the world throws upon us “we should aim to be like water.” Both Lu and Bruce Lee got it right!

Connected turned Roy Ayers’ “We Live in Brooklyn Baby” into one of the funkiest tunes heard in our land of thousand lakes where summer is short and imagination runs high. No one in the audience missed the repetitive lyrics of the original: We live in Brooklyn baby / We live in Brooklyn baby / We try to make it baby. …

Instead, the group focused on the neck-jerking groove and melody that each and every player chillied up with fantastic solos. Oh, the pleasure, the pleasure!

“Someday We’ll All Be Free,” a cover of the late soul legend Donny Hathaway, got a facelift when Lu connected with Hayma’s rubato, and when the drummer Tim “Smithsoneon” Smith broke into song with silky smooth vocals, some folks in the crowd barely remembered to breathe.

When after playing for about an hour and a half and it was time to wrap it up, Connected earned a standing ovation.

Some members of the crowd were still gasping heavily during the applause, only to relax later at the meet-and-greet with Lu and Goods, where they sold and signed CDs.

Connected‘s performance definitely counts as one of the best jazz concerts this writer has ever heard live.