Time to jazz it up

With International Jazz Day falling on Sunday, around 80 artists from nine countries will participate in the International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert.

The most celebrated annual event in jazz, it will be streamed live and broadcast on television stations to a global audience.

Leading Chinese jazz musicians will participate in the event by sharing their performances online.

The Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra, a full-size big band featuring some of the most active musicians in China, will perform George Gershwin's classic Fascinating Rhythm and Hay Burner by icon Count Basie.

Chinese jazz guitarist Liu Yue will present two original compositions, The River Dragon and China Girl, accompanied by organist Zhou Xia and drummer Xu Zhitong.

In addition to these performances, trombonist Yang Ming, who currently leads the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra, will present a 45-minute master class in Mandarin on the topic of jazz education.

Both the performances and the master class will be broadcast worldwide through the event's organizers, UNESCO and the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz's online platforms on Sunday.

"We decided to perform those music works to pay tribute to the great jazz musicians and to show our respect to the long history of jazz music," says Yang.

Beginning his music training at 5 years old, Yang studied composition at the Manhattan School of Music in New York from 2006 to 2008, before returning to his home country to perform as a trombonist and dedicate himself to jazz education.

"Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra previously didn't participate in the official activities on International Jazz Day, but we held events every year on April 30 to mark the occasion," says Yang, who took up the position of the conductor of Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra in 2021.The troupe was established in 2016, and regularly performs at Blue Note Beijing Jazz Club, which opened in the capital in September that year.

It was the first Chinese branch of the well-known Blue Note Jazz Club, which opened in 1981 in New York's Greenwich Village. Since its opening, Blue Note Beijing Jazz Club has brought some of the biggest names in jazz to perform there, including Grammy-winning bassist Stanley Clarke and legendary pianist Chick Corea, also a Grammy winner. In 2019, Blue Note Jazz Club opened a second Chinese venue in Shanghai.

"This year, we are honored to be part of the International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert. The band is home to professional musicians who are among the most active and well-known in the country," says Yang. "We are excited to see a vibrant jazz music scene in the country, with the number of people who love the sound growing fast."

"It's a great opportunity for Chinese jazz music to be recognized by a global audience. I am glad to be able to perform two of my original music pieces with my colleagues," says guitarist Liu, who was introduced to jazz in his early 20s and combines Chinese folk music elements into his works.

Jazz, which originated among the African American community in the United States in the late 19th century as an emotional reaction to racial oppression, has taken root in China since the 1920s and the 1930s. With the efforts of homegrown musicians, jazz is now a vibrant and fast-developing scene in the country.

Jazz pianist Dai Liang, 23, better known by his stage name A Bu, made his debut at the International Jazz Day's global concert in 2015, when he was invited to join American jazz musicians Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Marcus Miller, as well as many other distinguished names, to perform at UNESCO's Headquarters in Paris.

Since then, Dai has performed in multiple editions of the global concert: 2017 in Havana, Cuba; 2019 in Melbourne, Australia; an online performance in 2020, and another concert in 2021 in New York.

"Through performing at the International Jazz Day's global concert, I was given the opportunity to collaborate with many internationally acclaimed jazz musicians whom I admire," says Dai, who is currently pursuing his master's degree at Mannes School of Music at The New School in New York.

"Being able to play music with them on the bandstand was an unforgettable experience. Especially in jazz, where excitement and spontaneity occur during the process of improvisation, it was a privilege for me to play music in such a professional, yet warm environment. I was very much inspired by the other musicians," Dai adds.

Dai started to learn piano at the age of 4 and was introduced to jazz by his father. He made his stage debut at the age of 13 during the Beijing Nine Gates International Jazz Music Festival, and impressed the audience, the musicians and critics with his seemingly limitless technique and a deep understanding of tunes written long before he was born.

"Having this opportunity to showcase Chinese jazz is a milestone event for the ongoing development of the jazz scene in China," he says.

The idea for what would become International Jazz Day was first proposed by Hancock in 2011, shortly after he was named as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.

In an article, titled Reflections on 10 Years of International Jazz Day, released on April 30, 2021, Hancock writes, "As a jazz pianist and composer who has been making music for more than six decades, I know intimately well the power of music — and especially jazz — to bring people together and make a positive difference in the world.

"International Jazz Day is the embodiment of everything I have spent so many years trying to build through music — a movement in which people of all ages, nations, backgrounds, identities and ethnicities can agree that our similarities are stronger than our differences."

In November 2011, UNESCO officially designated April 30 as International Jazz Day in order to highlight the music and its diplomatic role of uniting people from all over the globe. Now, the International Jazz Day is chaired and led by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and Hancock, who serves as the chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, a nonprofit organization that is in charge of planning, promoting and producing this annual celebration.

In 2011, Thomas R. Carter, a member of the US National Commission for UNESCO, also president of the Hancock Institute of Jazz, was instrumental in establishing International Jazz Day. He recalls that, in 2010, together with Hancock and the team from UNESCO and the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, he traveled to attend the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, bringing performances and education programs to Shanghai and Beijing.

He notes that before the concert on Sunday, audiences, young and old, can watch streamed educational programs in Arabic, English, French, Mandarin and Spanish, with topics including music making for kids, improvisation, and the intersection of jazz harmony with international musical traditions.

"We have been impressed by the submissions of International Jazz Day related events in China over the past few years," says Carter. "We were enormously impressed by the musicianship in China on that visit and, since then, have been honored to work with Chinese musicians as a part of our All-Star Global Concert and as partners with organizers throughout the country each year for International Jazz Day."

For example, he mentions, Chinese musician Liu Yuan participated in Istanbul, Turkiye, in 2013, and Chinese saxophonist Li Gaoyang participated in the 2018 global concert in St. Petersburg, Russia.