Using only raw material recorded at the concerts in China, I have made a little remix.Thanks to Wim Kegel for providing the raw audio!Enjoy.

remix

a video impression of our bus trip into Guangzhou.

This tour has been a great event. For all of us. In many ways this tour has been a meeting. A meeting of cultures, of music, of musicians, of ages.

Never before did I travel in such a big group. Eight musicians and three or four organisers, one or two of the local universities and Irene and Xianghua of Wu Promotion. Although Calefax and my trio met before many times, we never actually traveled together. Tours like this make you either drift apart or get closer. With all the travelling, stress, fatigue and changing conditions you really get to know each others lesser flattering sides. It was great to realize that we became one group instead of two right from the start. Each musician naturally taking his place and responsibility in the group. The first few days we were wondering whether we should appoint a leader or central spokesperson but before we knew it everything worked out organically in a quite democratic way. Important decisions were taken centrally or by small subgroups, depending on the subject. For me it was a great lesson in sociology.

Musically we also grew much closer. During some of our many meals together we would discuss improvisation, harmony, studying and many other things. These Calefax guys are so disciplined rehearsing and studying that it also inspired the trio to get into new music. Almost every day we rehearsed together, made new arrangements, adjusted old ones. It was like music lab on the road.

Meeting new guest musicians every day was great. In one or two hours, but usually less we had to prepare a new piece that would go the same night, with musicians we didn’t even know by name and instruments we’ve never seen. ‘Just call me Vincent.’ or ‘You can call me Mary’; they would usually say, as they are used to do with foreigners who will probably not be able to remember, let stand pronounce there Chinese names. We tried several times which usually ended up with an audience shamelessly laughing at us.

After every concert we had the ever popular meet-and-greet sessions on stage. A moment to make pictures with giggling V-signing girls and boys, and of course sign many signatures which they oddly enough mispronounce as ‘ sick natures’ which leads to hilarious misunderstandings of which I will spare you the details. But the best are the conversations, the questions and the comments. With some it brings out there poetical Chinese side. One boy tells me he had a near death experience during our concert but our music drew him back to life. I was glad to be of help..

Playing for students who grow up in these turbulent times in China, a time full of changes, a society slowly opening up to other countries and ideas, is a privilege. Compared to their fellow students in Europe they are so eager to learn new things, experience new music. It was great to be able to play for them and tell them about our music. To give Ellington’s definition of jazz: jazz is freedom of ideas, and freedom of expression. A concept still under developments for most Chinese.

Music says it better than a thousand words.

During the tour in China, we saw some fascinating examples of creative English, used on various signs and marquees. The small selection of pictures below proves once again that English has truly become an international language!

When entering a restaurant, hearing and seeing all these noises and sounds of great comfort and pleasure, you know you’re in the right place to be! Because Chinese people love to let other customers know that the food is really delicious. All the things we learned in the West concerning great table-manners you can skip right away. You don’t have to worry which fork and knife you have to use to match the course of the menu because people eat with chopsticks, and one eats with everyone out of the same pots and pans that are placed on this big round glass rotating disc. When you have a problem how to handle chop sticks, and try to grab on to some meat or something slippery like fish while somebody on the other side of the table starts to turn the disc you are in big trouble. Don’t worry, there is a solution! You can use the small plate or bowl in front of you, but that shows you are not a master chopstick eater and that you have a real bad technique. Also the menu is long with a lot of choices. Choices we could never make in the West. All the standard Chinese courses known in the West are not to be found, they have different names and taste much better. The menu gives you beautiful colour pictures of the courses when you can’t make your choice, or can’t read the menu. But be careful Westerners! What looks like beef can be pig guts. Chinese don’t like to waste anything and eat therefore everything. So it happened that I coincidentally ate some parts of animals I would have never tried at home. Like pig tongue ( Chinese believe by eating this, they become very eloquent speakers), not bad. Pig-neck, pig-feet, frogs, waterlily( super!), and much more. If you really show you are freaked out by eating this, give a big burb! Do you find something in your mouth that feels uncomfortable, like chicken-bone, just spit it out and wipe it under your dish. When the food is too spicy and your nose starts running, snotter and blow your nose; tissues are all over the table. Suck the noodles out of the bowl while you slurp the soup. Great fun and everything tastes great. The great advantage Chinese people have to us ( not to me, but in general)  is that they are absolutely not disturbed or irritated by other people’s behaviour, and I like them for that. I bought a Chinese cookbook, I am sure I’m going to use it for the rest of my life. Wim

Here are the results of unbiased, profound  and scientific research on Chinese linguistics regarding the widely spread misuse of the letters l and r. It is commonly known that the Chinese have difficulty pronouncing them, however they do have these sounds in their own language.

Words and names with syllables ending on an l are pronounced thus:
football – foot bore
hotel – hot air
concert hall – concert whore
gentlemen – gender men
Alban – Arban
Jelte – Jerte
Wim Kegel – Wim Cake air

Names with syllables starting with an r:
Maurice Ravel  - Maurice Love air
Bolero – bo le lah
Raaf – La fuh  (f is not favored as a closing consonant, so a random sound is added [but I’m not complaining: fuh means prosperity])

Words that sometimes cause problems . The pronunciation of these words  depend on whether the l is regarded as closing or starting a syllable:
No problem – no peroberem or no ploblem
Calefax – Carefax or Calefax
Trio – tlio or terio

names that do not cause problems:
Maarten
Ivar
Oliver
Tony Overwater

These examples support my earlier assumption (publ. in my thesis for De CaleFAX Sept. 2007) that the Chinese prefer the l as a starting consonant and the r as a closing one.

Dr. Raaf Hekkema

Since we travel a lot as musicians, it’s logical a suitcase is due to break at some point. Mine did actually break just before we left for this China tour. But hey, you’re going to the country where everything is being made anyway, so that’s the place to buy one, one would say. So the very first evening off, I went to the centre of Shanghai, asked around for some suitcases, found some suitable sizes and asked if they also had a Samsonite. The lady pointed to the suitcase of a obscure make, and said; ‘Ah, you Samsonite!…we can make it Samsonite.’ How could I forget, brands are no guarantee in China. mmm..next time I’ll ask for a Rolls Royce

Bye, Oliver

During our third concert in Guangzhou the jazz trio plays this Chinese tune with Pipa (left) and Erhu (right). Maarten Ornstein plays a spontaneous solo, the audience loves it. We have a much better audio recording than this one, but it takes too much time to put this together professionally. Hope this gives an impression! AW

At the moment we’re in Guangzhou where we are doing four concerts at the Sun Yat Sen University.We are flying home after Guangzhou and I want to buy some presents for my family, so it’s now or never. Luckily we had some free time yesterday morning to visit the city centre. There is one thing I learned about cities in China and that is that every part of the city is specialized in one type of shops. There is the street where you can buy new spectacles. That street is close to the part of town where the plumbers do their work.  So when your eyes are fine and so is your water supply system, you’re in the wrong part of town, which was in the beginning my case. But wherever you are, you have to keep looking, because you can see the most extraordinarily things. The contrasts are big. In front of the tool shop there are people sitting and eating. That is because it’s the terras belonging to the restaurant next door. There was also a beautiful shop window with all kinds of pastry. His neighbor was the butcher who just cut a dog into two pieces and emptied the upper half. I don’t think the Chinese care about these things. Luckily for me after passing the tool shops there was the district with small galleries with Chinese paintings. Greetings, Jelte

The concerts in Guangzhou are all at different campusses of the Sun Yat Sen University. The campus where our hotel is situated is beautifully planted, full of nature. Very nearby there is a big lotus pond, surrounded by big palm trees. Combined with the temperature, we are having a tropical experience.

Also in the concert hall: during our rehearsal at the medical faculty the temperature is rising and rising. After three hours working ourselves in sweat, we find out they have an air conditioning system….which is good for the almost 1000 students that are starting to enter the hall. Every night here in Guangzhou we have a couple chinese solists: tonight we play the famous song Er Quan Ying Yue with the very sweet Erhu player Vincent. It is beautiful to listen to the tender expression this young boy manages to get out of this rather simple chinese folk instrument with 2 strings. The trio plays with two girls on Erhu and Pipa: starting off as traditional Chinese music, Tony, Wim and finally Maarten step in to change it into a melting pot of chinese folkjazz.

It’s also the first time this tour, that we play an encore. For this occasion Tony has made an arrangement of “Why is Flower Red?”, a well known tune, that breathes the sweet, singing harmony that the chinese like so much. After the concert I go back to the hotel…..all the chinese food is getting a bit too much for me….
Ivar

On Sunday the men in  Zhenjiang go to the park, play cards and take their singing birds out.

Yesterday we had a day off in Zhenjiang , and because Irene (one of our tour managers) had told us about some touristic sites, we decided to visit the old part of the city, which was supposed to be an example of how Chinese cities were in the old days. But we’re still musicians, so first things first: coffee. This caused us some delay, because the Chinese make such a big ritual of the coffee making. Compared to the coffee ritual, making Chinese tea is peanuts.  Anyway, after one and a half hour or so we took a taxi again and than I did something very rude: while opening the backdoor, I meanwhile pulled out the complete handle of the door. If the taxi driver reads this: I really apologize, I didn’t do it on purpose, but did I really do that? (I don’t want to complain about the taxies, because they bring us everywhere, dead or alive!). This taxi brought us to the Zaanse Schans of Zhenjiang: I loved it! You could look inside the old Chinese homes, where the old Chinese people were still living. There was an old man destroying an old chair to make some wood for the stove. Another old man was reading the newspaper in the middle of the street. But the most beautiful image was this old woman clipping the nails of her husband: real Chinese love. Greetings from China,Jelte

In Shanghai we bumped into this wonderful pair of musicians. They were playing on a rather crowded street in the campus of Shanghai University and many people, even students, gave them some cash. I was struck by their intense, concentrated way of playing, as well as by the inventive construction that allowed the old man to play the wood block with his right foot. I video taped at least 10′ but only later I realised what happens in this 57’’ scene. Blind musicians probably have such good ears that they’ll easily distinguish the sound of the different coins thrown into their money box. But if someone (like Raaf) throws in a note, they don’t even notice! On the left you see a Chinese man who kindly tells the old woman that she’d better empty the box. They stop playing, take the money, smile… and continue playing. Slightly faster than before. AW

Some impressions of Zhenjiang today by Oliver

click to enlarge

After a nice day of rest in Shanghai, we travel to Zhenjiang by car. According to the schedule this is a three hour drive, but it takes us three hours to get out of Shanghai! There are so many cars here, and despite the fact that China is big, we’ve been in a lot of traffic jams. After a quick lunch in the hotel we go straight to the venue; a big sporting palace. It’s a huge hall, with more then 1000 seats.  The entrance to this concert is free, we’re told that it will be full tonight!

Excited about this news we start our preparations for the concert. We still have to practice a bit on the new piece by Michiel Braam that we will play for the first time tonight. A -very sweet -  Chinese couple will do a dance performance during our concert. They do a nice job, improvising during our rehearsal, and appearing in several glamourous outfits during the concert. When we get on stage - as usually introduced by some young chinese girls - the hall is pretty full. Lots of young people and families with children. We play a mixed program: the first set consists of Dutch and Chinese music, inspired by Duke Ellington, in the second set we play his complete Far East Suite. After a few days in China, the band starts to sound better every concert.  We don’t realize it so much, but for most people in this audience our kind of music is completely new. In the break people come up to us and tell us how happy they are, and during(!) and after the concert, people are taking pictures with us, collecting autographs and expressing their excitement. During the break I ask Xianghua our tour assistant, what the chinese signs behind us are saying. Amused and surprised we find out it means: “welcome to the opening of World City Center”. It’s great anyway to be able to perform this great music to an audience that probably won’t be coming to official (and expensive) concerts, even when after the break only a small 200 (but very attentive listening) people rest in the arena of the basket ball field.
Ivar

Once a Korean company remastered a cd I made with maarten Ornstein and Yuri Honing. This cd ‘Up close’ was renamed, remastered and redesigned to fit the Asian market. The cd was renamed ‘Over the Rainbow’, a lonely bass under a colorful rainbow made quite a difference to our European version, . Today we met Rainbow. Rainbow is the name of a talented young saxophone player. A girl pretty as if she just walked away from a japanese cartoon. Untill the finest detail she managed her style, succesfully so. She played some beautiful Chinese songs with us. Our first international guest with the Far East revisited. It was quite an event. The auditorium of the Shanghai university was filled with a young and very attentive audience. Patiently and tenderly listening to our music.

The biggest compliment came from our contact May, a painter and teacher. She told me she loved the transparancy of our music, that she could actually see all the layers. It’s a great compliment from a great person. We all were taken by her charm and directness and almost unchinese sense of humor. After our concert, at the dinner, she treated us with the local speciality that is only found in the month of october. Shanghai Crab. A delecacy not loved by all of us, it included some precise cleaning of the longs and the heart of the crab, but appreciated by all. I am a lover of seafood and especially lobster so it was defenitely a treat for me. Only to be enhanced by the chinese rice wine.

All in all a memorable start of our Chinese tour.

Today we started our most Eastern part of our Far East Revisited tour. Shanghai, the huge city on the East coast of China is as far east as we will get. And also as far as possible from the Duke Ellington tour. He never played in China on his tour in the sixties. But to be able to experience the same contrast between east and west as Duke experienced on his trip, we are well off here in China. In a country that is only just opening up to the rest of the world it is still a real alienating trip. As stated on our application form for the arrival and departure card: ‘Aliens who reside or stay in China shall carry with themselves their passports for possible examination’.

We will be playing at the Shanghai university on thursday. The first day we arrive we have time to get accustumed to the timezone and climate and we are indulged by one of the topattractions of China, the Chinese Kitchen! within 12 hours we eat three hot meals. All of them different, all of them exquisite. Our evening dinner is at a restaurant where one of the attractions is, besides the delicous spicy red peppered food, is a chinese opera show, the mask dance. A dancer is changing masks so fast you can’t see how he does it. About 15 different masks appear and disappear in a great show that is still one of the secret arts of the Chinese opera.