The Asian Wall Street Journal
August 1-3, 2003
Dress Up, Or Down
by JOHN KRICH
No Black Tie has nothing to do with dressing up or fashion. Down a side street lined with run-down bungalows and Indian food stalls, this cozy wood-paneled club and bar is Kuala Lumpur’s leading live music venue for foreign acts and international-style atmosphere.
Mostly it’s jazz you’ll hear here, but underground pop, rock, folk, Latin, fusion and even classical acts also make appearances. A sampling of recent and current acts reveals everything from Singapore’s Universal Blues Band and traveling Italian guitarist Enrico Crivellaro, to jazz trios from Indonesia and Finland and up-and-coming Malaysian musicians.
It all began when Sarawak-born Evelyn Hii, a feisty 33-year old classical pianist, returned to Kuala Lumpur from New York in 1996. Trying to create classical music evenings outside the snobbery of the symphony hall, she organized performances at a popular French restaurant called Breizh in 1998 and, by 2000, ended up renting out the entire space for her own Bohemian adventure (thousands of empty French wine bottles lining the walls are the only clue to its former identity).
Those who gather at the No Black Tie bar are among the city’s most steadfast non-conformists. It’s open six nights a week and has a $5 to $10 cover charge, mainly “so we get serious music people, not those who talk all the time – I hate that,” says Ms Hii.
Unwittingly, that’s made No Black Tie the center of Kuala Lumpur’s serious alternative community, a platform for young folk singers, jazz players, composers, comedians and good causes.