Celebrated local jazz artist Quyen Thien Dac will perform in “Jazz suite night” in Hanoi tonight, Oct 4.

The 90-minute event, to be held at Hanoi Opera House at 8PM, will feature Dac telling his own story about himself and his father, seasoned jazz artist Quyen Van Minh.

During the show, Dac and several other artists will perform “Love Supreme” by African-American jazz legend John Coltrane, as well as his own composition “Cha va con” (Father and Son).

Tickets cost VND300,000, 500,000, and 800,000 (US$14 to $38).

Like other local and foreign jazz artists, Dac and his father have encountered numerous difficulties attempting to gain a firm foothold in the genre in Vietnam.

Minh’s small bar, which is dedicated exclusively to jazz performances, was once forced to close and relocate. Though the bar doesn’t yield much profit and they could barely afford to make their own albums, the father and son have given frequent performances and work hard as tutors to maintain one of the city’s few jazz venues.

“I’ve been taking the path less traveled, which has been cleared by my father. It’s my job to put asphalt on its surface and attract more traffic and pedestrians,” shared Dac, who studied jazz for three years in the US.

Dac’s music has gone much further than his father’s in that he fuses bewitching jazz with mesmerizing traditional Vietnamese music. It’s hard to decipher  exactly which traditional genres and from which region he’s borrowing, but the music is undoubtedly reminiscent of familiar Vietnamese songs.

The artist has been nurturing a dream to create the jazz of Vietnamese people by blending jazz with traditional music, pre-war and even pop songs.