One of our leading musicians speaks to Mark Tjhung about rock, jazz and Cantopop, and mixing them all together

It’s easy to lose track of what Peter Scherr has been up to. As the bassist, producer, composer, and longtime Hongkonger sits in a Wan Chai coffee shop, jazz quietly murmuring in the background, even he needs a moment to collect his thoughts. “Another group I’ve got going is the Deaf Aids, my feel good band,” he resumes, including his Hong Kong-based group in the collection of five or so in which he proudly claims involvement.

It’s the kind of demanding schedule that we’ve come to expect from one of the territory’s leading jazz cats – a reputation that’s marked not only by an industrious diligence but also a willingness to experiment. But, surprisingly for someone who sounds so at home in the genre, jazz didn’t always come naturally to Scherr.

By contrast, his musical career, even up to as recently as ten years ago, was much more a product of his upbringing: a synthesis of his mother’s love for classical piano and his Dad’s affinity with rock. “I would come home from school and listen to Beethoven string quartets and Led Zeppelin – that was my teen angst music,” says the American-born Scherr, who we named in our Top 20 Hong Kong musicians back in 2008.

It was the classical music tradition, and the double bass, that captured him initially, ultimately leading him to pursue the largest of the strings at a tertiary level. He then brought his musical talent to our shores when he landed a gig with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in 1989, a position he held up until 1996.

While he dabbled in jazz occasionally, his real passion for it only came later. And despite his clear talent for the genre, it didn’t necessarily flow easily. “It takes time to learn how to function in a jazz setting,” he says. “I had to unlearn a lot of things that I thought about all the time in the symphony. For example, thinking all the time. You have to be much more in the moment, much more flexible, less concerned about what you thought or hope would happen.”

But come the new millennium, Scherr’s mindset changed and he started a period of “fanatical listening,” grabbing hold of any sonic influences within his grasp. “I discovered so much music in every imaginable genre. If I would hear something that I didn’t like, I would listen to it more and try to understand why I didn’t like it,” he says, even finding value where many others wouldn’t: Cantopop. “There’s an infectious disease in [Cantopop] that’s valuable. The kind of way that formulaic crap is annoying in a certain charming way for me.” He also found particular resonance in the American avant-garde, epitomised by the music of Uri Caine, John Zorn, and his brother, Tony, in his group Sex Mob.

It’s no wonder, then, that the output we hear from Scherr today is a less-than-standard brand of jazz, fusing myriad non-jazz elements with the more traditional. “My music is in the continuity from [jazz] to rock music. Most of the groups that I play in have an improvisational soloist, jazzy aspect, but with a lot of rock sounds and rhythms and what I love about rock, which is this unruly, hairy sonic texture.”

Since his debut record, 2003’s The Blue Album, Scherr has been prolific, both as a gigger and a recording artist, involved with no fewer than nine releases across his ensembles. Just in the last year, Scherr has seen three of his projects completed, ranging from the latest from his Jazz Folk ensemble, featuring his own versions of tracks from artists including Beck (Nobody’s Fault But My Own) and The Velvet Underground (Pale Blue Eyes), to a TOHK favourite Tag – a release from the ensemble Signal to Noise – and an album with Masaka Hamamura, Kind Mind.

Hardly one to let his bass cool, Scherr is already on the cusp of unleashing a new record called Son of August, a dark and simmering jazz album of his own material that occasionally caresses the influence of rock, country and funk, and revels in first-class contributions from his NYC posse of Michael Blake (saxophone), Mike Sarin (drums), Brad Shepik (guitar), and Tony Scherr (guitar).

The irons Peter Scherr has in the fire are so numerous and varied, it’s hard to know what he’ll next extract from the fiery cauldron of his musical mind. But with mainland guqin artist Wu Na and Chinese experimental folk artist Li Dai-guo just a couple of the names that he hopes to be working with in the near future, it’s probably fair to say it’s something you won’t be expecting.

Peter Scherr performs as part of Jazz Series HK at M1NT on March 3 and at the Rebuilding Haiti show at Osage Kwun Tong on March 6. Rebuilding Haiti tickets: 2172 1620; www.oaf.cc/rebuildinghaiti. Peter Scherr’s albums available at www.peterscherr.com.