*** Today the focus is on one Klaus Bru, a German musician who's been kicking around greater China since 2002. Herr Bru, who goes by the performance name Kaa (卡), is one of the few remaining C Sax players in the world. He wails exclusively on C Melody and C Soprano reeds, which were apparently big in the '20s among military bands and vaudeville pits. Klaus toted his anachronistic axes around the Vienna jazz scene in the early '90s before plunging into Berlin's ever-fluxing avant-garde music scene towards the fin-de-siècle. He moved to Taipei in 2002 and since then has been splitting time between that island outpost, Vienna, and, most recently, Beijing. Here he's been able to plug right into to the small but solid jazz scene. Below is his trio KaSanRen — featuring Brandon Gaoiran on bass and Alex Morris on drums — performing a Klaus Bru original: You can catch KaSanRen Trio tonight at Jianghu if you're into the more straight-ahead, ear-friendly jazz stuff. Kaa's leaning is definitely more toward the far-out end of that spectrum, though. Took him a while to find Beijing musicians with an equally mind-melted avant outlook, but eventually he washed up at XP. Here he is busting an electro-acoustic C Sax improvisation with protean double bassist A Ming: After a summer of fairly heavy gigging, Klaus is departing Beijing in a cyclone of free skronk freakouts. He's hitting XP tomorrow for one last Zoomin' Night, where he'll team up with A Ming again, along with "extreme free improv" duo ORLOP. The latter is an unholy marriage between Beijing-based noise guitar / theremin shredder Adam MacGregor and free-jazz caveman drummer Stephen Roach. Here're some of their smoother tunes: Kaa + Orlop is also playing on Thursday at Old What. Here's what that looked like as of last month in one of those burned out Andingmen bomb shelter practice spaces: Klaus' last hurrah for this round is a solo performance entitled "Alone," which he'll give on Sunday, July 13 at 69 Cafe. That's the same night as the World Cup final and it's fitting because "alone" is precisely how I feel when everyone around me is discussing the World Cup. After the solo set, Klaus will helm one final freewheeling improv set with a bunch of his newfound Beijing buddies before packing off to Taipei or Vienna or wherever it is he's going. Sure we'll see him back here at some point. Here's a long take of "Alone" as performed on New Year's Day at Old What: *** RECAP: KaSanRen Trio = TONIGHT (Mon, July 7) @ Jianghu Kaa + A Ming + Adam MacGregor + Stephen Roach = Tue, July 8 @ XP Kaa + Orlop = Thu, July 10 @ Old What Klaus Bru - "Alone" solo show = Sun, July 13 @ 69 Cafe