Jazz, cocktails, comedy and cabaret. At “Hidén Harlekin”, you can immerse yourself in another world with a Japanese twist and switch off the analogue way thanks to Kevin Tarō Bicker.
Jazz, cocktails, comedy and cabaret. At “Hidén Harlekin”, you can immerse yourself in another world with a Japanese twist and switch off the analogue way thanks to Kevin Tarō Bicker.
Kevin Tarō Bicker, born in 1991 in Kyoto, is the business owner and creative director of the Hidén Harlekin club, which he opened at Bahnhofstrasse 30 in Zug in December 2022. As the son of a Japanese mother and a Swiss father, Bicker has been travelling between Europe and Asia since he was a child. He makes the most of the influences of both cultures. As a hospitality-school graduate, he knows a thing or two about food and marketing, but he is also passionate about art and design. Calligraphy is another of his passions.
Sabine Windlin met Kevin Tarō Bicker at Hidén Harlekin for our destination magazine #inlovewithzug.
SW: When you set up a jazz club in a small town, it can’t be for the money. Was it passion that led you to launch the “Hidén Harlekin” at the end of 2022?
KTB: Yes, but you also have to get the finances right. After all, I have responsibilities – I have wages to pay and, as a business owner, I don’t want to lose money. So it needs to work as a business. And it does! Our guests tell us the same thing time and again: Zug has been waiting for a club like this.
SW: The club’s motto is “Jazz Kissa”. What does that mean? Kissed awake by jazz or something like that?
KTB: “Kissa” means tea shop in Japanese, so jazz kissas are places where you drink tea and listen to jazz. Decades ago, in cities like Kobe, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Yokohama, music lovers were meeting up to listen to records because not everyone could afford LPs and record players. These meeting places were all part of a broader context of enthusiasm for Western culture and music. The Second World War disrupted the success of the jazz kissas, because jazz was now considered “the music of the enemy”. However, the jazz kissa community kept the records safely hidden during the war. The scene was later revived in the 1950s thanks to the US soldiers stationed in Japan, and it is still thriving today.
SW: Hidén Harlekin offers more than just tea and the sound of the needle on vinyl. The club is also known for its live concerts and cocktails.
KTB: That’s right. There is live jazz on Wednesdays and Fridays. We created the programme in collaboration with local musicians, as well as with the jazz academies in Lucerne and Zurich. Whenever there’s no band, there’s vinyl. You’ll hear Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and more. We see ourselves as a “listening bar” rather than a place where music just plays in the background. Here, you carefully pull a record out of its sleeve, put it on the turntable, listen to the music, take an interest in the genre and broaden your musical horizons. Music is celebrated here.
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