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Brockton Enterprise Article. Friday, August 28, 1998 "Sound and Vision" Column by Gil Bliss West Bridgewater is rapidly becoming a hotbed of jazz. Freda's on Copeland street is already known for its Monday night sessions, and now the Yangtze China Inn, 266 South Main St., a purveyor of Asian food for more than four decades is offering musical fare along with Chinese and Thai cuisine. The moving force behind this new direction is Ken Eng, a sound expert, graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the son of Yangtze owner James Eng. After a dining-room roof caved in two years ago under heavy snow, the younger Eng started to get more involved in the business, helping to redesign the room with a cathedral ceiling instead of the old flat roof. In this new space, he has installed a surround-sound system, which he helped develop while working for Lexicon [maker of professional audio products]. The mainstay of Eng's new jazz series is the Kubota Power Jazz Ensemble, featuring pianist Yasko Kubota and her husband Archie Kubota, on bass. My wife and I stopped in on our anniversary earlier this month to hear guest artist Dick Johnson of Brockton on reeds. (We hired him five years ago to play at our wedding in New Hampshire.) I've seen Johnson play in many varied ensembes, and he always manages to fit like a glove. True to form, although he had never met the Kubota couple prior to that Friday night, they sounded like they'd been performing together for years. Dick along with his drummer son Gary Johnson, played two shows at the Yangtze, the first one being a sellout. Thanks to Eng's marvelous sound system, every piano key, bass note, drum stroke and saxaphone squawk could be heard clearly around the room. He also has a modern concert lighting system, which was used extensively for Johnson's show, but I sensed it will be a little less active in the future after the operators get that "rock show" stuff out of their system. A special treat on this night was a guest shot from Brockton singer Krisanthi Pappas, who will be back on Nov. 6 for her own show with the Kubotas. Pappas enlivened the evening with a Gershwin tune, "I've Got a Crush on You," which is on her recent Gershwin tribute CD. She closed her segment with a nod to one of Johnson's vavorites, Frank Sinatra, with a steamy version of "The Lady Is A Tramp," featuring her adventurous vocals. I'd been told of Yasko Kubota's reputation as a top-notch pianist, adn such descriptions leave me somewhat skeptica, but she backed up the claims in concert. Kubota has lots of touring credentials, and she proved she is at least one of this area's best. Johnson was obviously impressed. As for Dick, he's producing a series at the Wonderland Ballrom in Revere remembering Frank Sinatra, which runs on Tuesday nights beginning Sept. 15. The Kubota Power Jazz Ensemble will be on its own for a Sept. 11 show at the Yangtze where they will play a variety of ethnic instruemnts they use in school demonstrations. Jazz fans should also cirlce Act. 2 on the calendars -- that's when Duxbury vocalist Rebecca Parris takes the stage. Pappas is back on Nov. 6, and then the Kubtas will host a Christmas jazz show at the restaurant on Dec. 18. In addition to the monthly concerts, which have a cover charge ($9 for Johnson), Eng is presenting "light jazz" on weekends in the dining room, but there's no extra charge. Gil Bliss is an Enterprise staff writer and can be reached at 508-427-4025 or GilBliss@aol.com.
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