I'm not sure to whom I should recommend this concert - classical music fans or jazz lovers, or both.

Brighton, UK-born violinist Nigel Kennedy (pictured above) will play Bach and jazz improvisations by the band Fats Waller in Guangdong's provincial capital Guangzhou and Beijing.

The 55-year-old has shaken the musical establishment with his outlandish attire and outspoken criticism of classical traditions.

He despairs at musicians who have "learned the same technical way and who all play the same technical way".

Kennedy has previously admitted to smoking marijuana to help him unwind after concerts. He also says that: "Cocaine and hashish are as popular with classical performers as in other sections of society."

He was Yehudi Menuhin's most famous prodigy. He studied first at the Menuhin School, where he paid his own tuition fees. He later went to the Juilliard School of Music in New York to study under Dorothy DeLay.

By 28, he had already made his debuts with the major European orchestras, including the all-important Berlin Philharmonic, and played all the major festivals at home and abroad.

He abruptly withdrew from public performances in the early 1990s.

But he found little had changed when he returned to the stage in 1997.

Kennedy takes the stage dressed as casually as he can with his punk hairdo. He departs in a more extreme fashion - that is, with a noisy, arthritic moonwalk and weird grimaces.

Kennedy says his interests go beyond classical music to include Indian music, jazz and rock. He has performed with The Who, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, to name a few.

"I was stepping back from all other considerations and revisiting in my mind the reasons I wanted to be a musician in the first place," he says.

"I think music should be a spiritual experience, and if it gets taken over by a kind of technical formula of interpretation, or a professional formula of presentation, then you're no longer being the artist you wanted to be in the first place."

7:30 pm, Feb 14. Guangzhou Opera House, 1 Zhujiang Xilu, Tianhe district, Guangzhou. 4008-808-922. 7:30 pm, Feb 16. Beijing Exhibition Hall Theater, 135 Xizhimen Waidajie, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-8757-6854.