Inside Coda, Hong Kong’s First Jazz Kissa Vinyl Listening Café

A few years ago, music-loving businessman Ricky Hung applied for a marketing job at Freespace, the performing arts institution that has significantly plumped up Hong Kong’s cultural offerings in recent years. He was interviewed by Kung Chi-shing – the unmistakable, long-white-haired arts curator, invariably found wandering around the crowd his events gather with a contented grin, clutching a glass of wine, previously described by Zolima as the “godfather of Hong Kong’s indie scene.”

Hung didn’t get the job. Instead, already in the twilight of his career, he decided to found a music-themed cafe/bar in Sai Ying Pun, named Kind of Brew, a play on the title of Miles Davis’ masterpiece Kind of Blue. After 18 months, he’d had enough. He handed the business over to a trusted collective of three new owners. One of them was Kung – although the curator didn’t recognise the man he’d snubbed until the handover day: Hung’s farewell party in May 2024. “At one point, Ricky pulled me into a corner and asked, ‘Kung, do you remember me?” he laughs. “Two years earlier, I had fucking rejected him!”

So to put it bluntly, if Kung hadn’t turned him down, Hung wouldn’t have gone on to found the venue – which now Kung has inherited and rebranded as “Hong Kong’s first jazz kissa,” Coda, a reference to the Japanese cafés that specialise in playing jazz music. 

Serendipity at work?

Impulsive behaviour

Kung had never visited Kind of Brew when he decided to take over the venue. But he did know he would soon be out of a job, ending a nine-year run leading Freespace’s performing arts programming at the close of 2024 – a role which saw him introduce the West Kowloon arts hub to thousands with the monthly pre-launch Freespace Happening series. After opening in 2019, he founded the annual Freespace Jazz Festival, the future of which now appears uncertain. “You can say, after I wrapped up, all the things I’ve created got stopped,” he says with a laugh, adding his programmes got a “very good response” but failed to “make any profit.” (A WestK spokesperson said the next season’s programming should be announced in late July.) 

Symbolically, on January 1, 2025, Kung loudly announced his new calling to the world, standing shoulder to shoulder with his  two younger co-founders Bowen Li and Andrew Wong, outside the newly renamed Coda. One person who soon took note was renowned Japanese jazz musician Ryuichi Sakamoto’s widow, who sent Kung a picture of the shopfront when she inadvertently drove past a few weeks later. “Did you ask her to leave a good Google review?” quips Li irreverently, showing there is little traditional generational based hierarchy at play.

“I just feel we’re touched,” Kung answers serenely, insisting it remains a complete coincidence that Coda shares a name with Sakamoto’s farewell biopic, which was released in 2017. As if to prove the point, a warm letter from the late Japanese composer hangs framed on the wall behind Kung head – a reminder of his decades of experience as artistic agitator. Li and Wong’s collective age doesn’t even match Kung’s 64 years on the planet, so how did this unlikely trio end up working together? 

Jazz-vengers, assemble!

It went something like: as well as being a hotshot pianist who just dropped one of Hong Kong’s best jazz albums, Li is a founding member of the Fountain de Chopin collective and jazz events space. When Ricky Hung decided it was time to permanently bounce, he called Li – who had visited Kind of Brew precisely once, on the night he was asked to perform. “It was kind of Ricky putting his hobbies together – vinyl, whisky and coffee. That was his dream after he retired,” remembers the 29-year-old pianist. “He’s a rich guy.” 

Hung figured the Fountain team might be interested in opening a second space, closer to the action than the industrial building in San Po Kong the group had opened a year earlier, in 2023. They weren’t. “They were like, no, why would we like to do it? Why would I like to sell coffee? I just want to play jazz!” says Li, who instead called his long-term buddy Wong, just returned from two years travelling in Latin America, feckless, footloose and, in his words, “fucking unemployed.”

The pair had worked together on various projects over the years, most notably the Fountain Vocal Tribe, and for Wong it was an unmissable chance to risk whatever savings he had left on a precarious business venture – despite the fact that, like Kung, he’d never even visited Kind of Brew. “It’s like all or nothing,” adds the 31 year old. “I was like, let’s go, from the first phone call. I had no idea what it would cost.”

When Li later mentioned that Kind of Brew would likely soon be closing to Kung, in passing at a casual lunch, he soon received an offer of support. “For me, as someone who’s been going to bars all my life, in the back of my head, I was interested in having my own bar,” says Kung, reminiscing about hallowed artsy hangout Club 71 and musicians’ after-hours jam spot Sense 99 – both victims of rising rents and recent years of upheaval. 

“Those were my two hangout places, so when they closed down, I was very bummed out about it,” says Kung. “There are no other places that really come close to that mood. So that was a push for me – the desire to open something similar to that [environment], where interesting people, artistic people, can hang out together.” Wong has a similar story: he cut his teeth jamming at Peel Fresco and Orange Peel, two long-gone Central jazz bars.

Meet the new bosses

With zero F&B experience between them, immediately following the June 1, 2024, handover, the new team decided not to rock the boat. Their first step was refreshing the menu and lowering the prices. “We believe music, art, whatever – it can be part of your lifestyle,” says Wong, who also does freelance digital marketing and teaches at the Hong Kong Productivity Council. “Before, it was super expensive – people could only [afford to] come once every three months.”

The first priority was buying a new sound system, sourcing a vintage turntable and impressive-if-affordable Technics horn speakers (which have an airy sound said to be especially good for voices and brass instruments) from “old uncles on Carousell.” Then they set about restocking the racks: the previous owner had shipped his entire record collection to Canada with him, so Li and Wong made multiple trips to Japan, returning with bursting suitcases full of vintage pressing classic jazz LPs, easily and affordably sourced in Tokyo’s plethora of well-ordered record stores. 

Prize picks from that hastily assembled grab bag are today stylishly displayed, with cool and classic album covers lining the venue’s walls, where vintage guitars once hung. “People thought it was like a guitar store,” grumbles Wong. “Why the fuck would we put guitars on the wall?” The front door’s distinctive handle — an actual guitar neck — remains, however. “This one, we like,” says Wong.

What is a jazz kissa, anyway?

Shifting the emphasis to the records was the most profound part of the rebrand, which saw the newly born Coda proudly subtitling itself a “jazz kissa.” Derived from the Japanese kissaten, or “tea-drinking shop,” jazz kissas developed in Japan’s postwar era as a place where music fans could listen to the latest jazz LPs at conversation-killing volume on a top-notch stereo they might never afford – all for the price of a coffee or highball. 

While old-school jazz kissas may slowly be dying out in Japan as their traditional customer base ages, the concept is being appropriated across the globe, as both the appreciation of deep listening and fetishisation of vinyl records has exploded in recent years, in clear response to the impersonality and disposability of streaming. “People have gotten very used to Spotify, skipping songs, being determined by an algorithm – nobody listens to a whole album,” says Wong. “But here it’s kind of like a ritual – to choose an album, listen to it, just sit here. And I think it’s an experience that young people have never experienced, especially Gen Z.”

This approach appears to have already been emulated by the recently opened West Garden Lane, a nearby cocktail bar where visitors are encouraged to rifle through a collection of Cantopop vinyl, or bring their own records to play. Although the concept seems to be catching on, it’s notable that nearby music hangout Melody closed barely a year after a costly transformation from its previous incarnation as the all-day lounge space Potato Head.

Coda’s success may rest on its smaller scale, and the anti-elite ethos of music discovery. Visitors are welcome to pick albums they want to hear from off the walls, while several regulars have left slabs of their own records in the venue for others to enjoy. “I think jazz to most people here is not very approachable,” says Wong. “They feel like it has to be in City Hall, you have to be silent, you can’t even make any noise. And the thing is, it doesn’t have to be like that. It can just be like, fine, have a coffee.”

Coda’s owners, Andrew Wong, Kung Chi-shing and Bowen Li, stand outside the new jazz kissa

In most traditional Japanese jazz kissas, talking during music is considered a big no-no, a policy more casual visitors may be happy to hear is not enforced at Coda – although purists may grumble. “It’s great to see so many places worldwide inspired by Japanese jazz listening spaces, as it will bring further awareness to the culture and may increase its longevity,” says Philip Arneill, co-creator and photographer of the Tokyo Jazz Joints photobook and podcast. “I think it’s also vital to understand the origins and history of the term ‘jazz kissa’ and what it truly means. For me, if you’re calling it a listening space, then the music and listening should always be at the forefront.”

Silence is golden

There are times when silence is strongly preferred at Coda, notably during formal listening sessions when a guest speaker presents an album they hold dear. It doesn’t have to be jazz: Wong has presented Marvin Gaye’s Midnight Love, Li has shared Michael Jackson’s disco-flavoured debut Off the Wall, and local guitar hero Eugene Pao stopped by to talk about Steely Dan’s crossover classic Aja. 

Kung’s first calling is as a professional composer, so he’s intent on pushing appreciation of classical music, recently hosting a lecture and listening session on Chopin’s 24 Preludes and planning an evening of Philip Glass in July. Previous speakers at the monthly cultural salons have included Sang Jijia, the recently appointed artistic director of City Contemporary Dance Company. 

Silence is also the norm during Coda’s live jazz performances, which happen roughly twice a week, as well as during the more occasional performances by singer-songwriters. “The audiences here are very attentive and also well-educated – people actually listen to the music,” says Li with apparent surprise. “That’s so rare in Hong Kong.”

At Coda, gigs are intimate affairs, with quietly seated audiences of around 30 – a marked difference from the rowdy and relaxed atmosphere of Chez Trente’s regular “living room concerts” and jam sessions. Kung has visited that Central space “two or three times – sometimes it’s just too noisy for me,” he says, while Wong notably says he’s never visited Coda’s local competition for live jazz. “There’s a difficult balance between being organic and being chaotic,” he quips.

A family affair

June 2025 is shaping up to be a big month for Coda – and not just because it marks a year since the trio took over the venue. Kung started the month by celebrating his 64th birthday with his first performance at the venue, playing with experimental protégé Olivier Cong as a multi-instrumental improvising duo that uses traditional Chinese, Thai and Indonesia instruments as strings, keys, guitar and bass. They are currently finishing up their debut album. 

On June 21, Li will perform for the first time as a bandleader at the venue, presenting the Bowen Li Trio hot on the heels of releasing their excellent debut album Unemployed. Three days later, the pianist will appear in the spotlight alongside Wong for the first time, leading a talk with the hackneyed title “Jazz is Dead?” And as if to prove it’s not strictly a family affair, before all that, on June 14, local piano king Ted Lo will play alongside prolific jazz and pop singer Bianca Wu.

Whatever your take on jazz, it’s clear that Coda is the definition of a passion project – and that it’s the shared fraternity of its founders that keeps its tank of goodwill full. “We don’t have a F&B background and we are not business people,” says Kung. “The main thing for me is to create a space that people can come and just talk to each other, a breathing space. There’s such a lack of that in Hong Kong – a lack of good music, good cultural events, good places where you can meet interesting people.

“I wouldn’t call myself an ambassador of anything, but I think it’s kind of linked to the idea I have of being a Hong Kong person – what can I do to contribute, to make a difference. I’m not thinking of big ambitions. If everybody did something small, something beautiful, then the city would be more beautiful.”

Bowen Li Trio plays at Coda on 21 June, 2025.
Check Coda’s Instagram page for details of upcoming events.