click here for an audio-visual look at the gig highlights

***for full gig listings jump to the bottom***

Greetings:

To all readers friends: you will notice that LengPleng is attempting to introduce hyperlinks to artist pages in order to better inform the audience of the styles and faces behind the many names that get listed each week.  Performers and venues – if the link being used is incorrect please let us know and we will update. 

Tonight, Thursday, in Phnom Penh find the jazz jam with Dr George at The Deck, Niel & Aisha at Little Susie, Loopy Reggae at The Big Easy, Brett Perkins at Cloud and the open mic hosted by Muz Muskett at Noisy Chili.  Later, The Extraordinary Chambers are at Oscar’s on the Corner.  On the coast, Arome Khmer are at Kep Natural and Poca is solo at Madi Bar.  In Siem Reap, Lost City Jazz Society return, appropriately, to Lost City Pizza Society.

The big deal on Friday in Phnom Penh is the Intan Andriana’s debut album launch, with international guests Steve Cannon, Melissa Lesnie and Christophe Astolfi, at Chew & Bash – see our interview with Intan below.  Elsewhere in Phnom Penh on Friday there’s Poca & Nestor at Khmer Funk Sky Bar, Greg Beshers at The Vine, Blues Brothers at Botanico, Kevin Sysyn at House of Jazz and More, Loopy Reggae at The Tin Hat and an open mic with Hugo St Leger at Velvet.   Mirasol, James & Jedil are at Metropole Underground, AlliG is at Rust, Adam Marsland plays the piano man at  Little Susie and Stu Cottom is at The Silk Route.   Later and louder, Soselo Summer are at Hometown Hangout and Montra are at Oscar’s on the Corner.  In Kampot, Wooden Bridge are at Madi Bar and in Siem Reap, JamCha is at Laundry.

A busy Saturday in Phnom Penh with something for everyone kicks off with Escape Festival at Maloop with offering the fine line-up of Brass on the Block, Checkered Past, Bustaka Band and Intan and Friends, while Miss Sarawan plays for the opening art exhibition Cambodia in Colour by Tim Wallace at Good Wood Furniture and Décor, and a new open mic at Villa Grange is hosted by Guit George & Johnny L.  The Originals Sessions at The Deck features Brett Perkins / Summer, Frank & Cameron / Gaby Courroux, Sara Garcia & the Muchasos are at House of Jazz and More and Scallywags Duo are at Botanico.  There’s more jazz to be found with Swingin’ High at Aquarius and Melissa Lesnie Trio (FR) at Au Marche.  Samley Hong opens for Kim & Co. at Velvet and Antonio Elchico is at Tropico.  Koalition Supreme is followed by a hip hop open mic with Cypher at Stories by Little Susie, Skeptical Chemistry are at Noisy Chili and Nightmare A.D. are at Distortion Dive Bar.  Brett Perkins is early at Oscar’s on the Corner before the return of AlliG & TheQuilas.  In Kampot, Chris Garcia is at Madi Bar.

Come Sunday, The Final Fiesta at Motodop farewells Sara Garcia, while Zakk Zoot is at The Vine, Sunday Sundowners open mic has a Scoddy’s birthday special at Tacos Kokopelli, John Peter is at Botanico and Joe Wrigley is at Bar Oz.  Later on, Shaken Spirit are at Oscar’s on the Corner.  In Siem Reap, The Pizza Garden have an open mic with Andy.

If you’re new to town and/or looking for a starter gig, The Tin Hat want to hear from you:

Department of New Releases

A video has been released this week for 45 a round, by Tired Panda (the trip-hop project of Andrea Rubbio of Geography of the Moon) featuring Cove Aaronoff of Japan Guitar Shop.

For those with a taste for EDM, LengPleng has been contacted by NanoDaHeroux, an electronic music producer who recently released a Khmer-language EDM track: Unfortunate Love.

The LengPleng Interview

My Life In Jazz – Intan Andriana’s debut album

After a lifetime of singing, including seven and a half years of stages in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, Indonesian singer Intan Andriana is this weekend launching her debut album, put together with the assistance of Phil Javelle and a vast array of local musicians.  Ahead of the big launch concert at Chew & Bash on Friday night Intan sat down with LengPleng to discuss where the music comes from.

LP:  Congratulations on putting an album together!

Intan:  It’s still such a surprise!  It’s been my lifelong dream to make a record – at first we were just talking, my husband Andrej and Phil and I, then we made it into something.  Andrej said: let’s do this!  This album is about my life in music, my journey, my life in jazz, my life as a new mum.  I am so excited.  The name of the album is My Life In Jazz, after a song that Phil wrote especially for me.

Read the whole article here

The LengPleng Interview

Going for a spin – Japan Guitar Shop goes vinyl

Two years after the initial digital release of Japan Guitar Shop’s debut album, Done You Right, it’s now available on vinyl.  LengPleng sat down with JGS co-founder Cove Aaronoff and Tony Lefferts of Pearl of Asia Records / Space Four Zero to revel in the glory of the LP in general and this one specifically.

Cove: It’s extremely grounding for me.  To hold it, to look at it.  I saw someone who, when they first saw it, hugged it.  I think that’s so cool.

Read the full article here

Passing Chords – a few things you may not know about

Melissa Lesnie.   “Becoming a jazz singer was an accident that happened in Paris.  In Australia I was a classical nerd – I was in professional choirs, singing Bach cantatas, I was an opera critic – my whole life was classical music and it never occurred to me to sing jazz.  One night in Paris I walked into a jam and somebody said what do you want to sing?  I didn’t even know what a jam was.  I’d recently been told by my employer, Radio France, that I wasn’t allowed to speak English on the premises anymore, so I had a need to express myself in English.  I had maybe three jazz songs – My Funny Valentine was one – and suddenly people were asking me when my next concert was.  It just went from there.  I now have 350 jazz standards committed to memory and do 100 concerts a year.   I am The Accidental Jazz Singer.”  Melissa will take part in Intan Andriana’s debut album launch concert at Chew & Bash on Friday night, then perform in a trio with Gaby Courroux and Darvel Martinez Chapman at Au Marche on Saturday night.   www.melissalesnie.com / Instagram @melissalesnie

Do you have a pet musical hate/pet peeve?
In France, audiences always clap on the one and the three, which drives me crazy.  I try to move them to the two and the four and sometimes I’ll threaten to interrupt the song.

A private musical indulgence:
I play the theremin.  I was always fascinated by them.  Nobody really actively seeks out a theremin, but I came across classes in Paris and I went along.  Now I have a theremin that I play, sometimes even in public.  Opera arias, jazz standards – anything lyrical.  You can get a lot of crazy effects out of it but that’s not really what I’m looking for.   Also I love Khmer pop, it’s the only thing that I knew about Cambodia before I visited here for the first time.  I saw the documentary Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten at a film festival, and the Cambodian Space Project was the first concert I saw when I moved to Paris in 2013.  Sometimes we play Khmer music loud to annoy our upstairs neighbours.

The year you first came to Cambodia:
2021, just after COVID.  My then boyfriend now husband is French Cambodian, and lived here for some time.  I was eager to come back to Asia – I used to go to the Philippines quite regularly, it’s where my mum comes from and most of my family lives.  So I thought Cambodia would be a good compromise – there would be familiar things and new things.  It was still closed when we booked our tickets, but opened a week later.  I wasn’t planning to do concerts, it was just a holiday, but I was introduced to Phil Javelle and suddenly there were concerts to be had, in fabulous places, and people who wanted to hear me.

An early music memory:
As a child I would fall asleep every night listening to Mozart sonata recordings that my mother would play – she thought it would make me a genius.  Also Glenn Gould’s recordings of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier.  I remember them all in a lot of detail, and wound up playing them during my years as a classical pianist.  I always listened to jazz, Nina Simone, Miles Davis.

The last thing you had to eat:
Olive oil ice cream from Koki.  Before that I had congee for breakfast.

Stagefright – yes or no?
Not as a singer.  There are moments where I am a bit astonished to come out and see a big crowd.  I once played at Guitar Fest in Montlucon, in the middle of nowhere, with a project of mine doing Les Paul & Mary Ford stuff.  On the train I met Johnny Holliday’s guitar player who said he was a fan and was looking forward to playing with us – it turned out it was a sold-out show for an audience of 700.  I wasn’t quite prepared for that – it was bigger than I thought it would be.  But I sing before a large audience exactly the same as I sing in a small bar, it’s the same connection.

A country you want to visit:
I would love to go to Bhutan.  I had a friend who was running an opera project there, doing Handel with Italian opera singers and local musicians on traditional instruments – I was going to come out for that but it never happened.  Or a silent retreat in Bali.  I don’t know if it would even be possible – does singing or humming count as a violation of the silence?

A book or movie you keep going back to:
There are very few books that I have reread.  The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles I have read a few times, as a teenager and twice more as an adult, it made a huge impression on me, particularly his descriptions of the music, and Morocco, and the sense of landscape and otherness.  The writing is just so beautiful.  He was a composer as well, and very inspired by the traditional music.

What languages do you have?
English and French.  I’ve forgotten most of my Tagalog, but whenever I hear it spoken I feel instantly cradled like I’m with my family.

Your primary instrument, and when you started playing it:
I was a classical pianist, but I haven’t touched a piano for 20 years.  I’m getting back into it a little because I’ve started teaching vocal jazz at a conservatorium and I need accompany my students.  I always sang – I loved singing as a child, and I was singing in choirs quite early on, including a professional Anglican church choir.  I didn’t allow myself to take voice seriously, I thought I was going to be a pianist – then I got to the Sydney Conservatorium and I realised that I was going to be the worst pianist in the class, so I changed to Musicology and didn’t play anything for a long time.  I used to write songs, I’d always have some sort of project going on, but I was very shy.  When I got to Paris I wasn’t shy anymore, for some reason.

Something people might be surprised to know about you:
I’m a bit of a sports junkie.  In Australia I would run 18 kilometres a day.  It doesn’t seem very compatible with jazz.  I used to go to yoga at 7 am, and I stopped that when I started doing jazz, with the late night lifestyle and everything.

You have a time machine and a magic ticket to one gig or festival in the past. What do you choose?
Baroque Venice.

A question from the last participant: Only spoon or only fork for all means forever?
It’s got to be a fork.   You can still spoon liquids with a fork, but you can’t twirl spaghetti with a spoon.

Department of Mutual Support:  Friends of LengPleng

  

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Steve Porte Photo of the Week

Drunk on Champagne at Monkey Republic, 21 February 2026

 

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See you around the traps.
your correspondent,

 

 

Guillermo Wheremount
LengPleng.com
gigs@lengpleng.com (mailto:gigs@lengpleng.com

 

Weekly Gig Guide – week commencing Thursday 26 February 2026

** residency/weekly

Thursday

 

Friday

 

Saturday                                                             

 

Sunday

 

Monday


Tuesday

 

Wednesday

Coming soon:   

 

Saturday 7 March

 

Saturday 13 March

  • Dr Salad (Scotland) plus Drunk on Champagne, 9 pm, Laundry (Siem Reap)

 

Wednesday 17 March

  • St Patrick’s Day with Rockustic, 7.30 pm, Wild Rover

 

Saturday 28 March

Sunday 29 March

  • Spanish guitar recital by Tran Quang Huy, 7 pm, Raffles Le Royal – note ticketed event

 

 

 

By Weekly Wrap