When Chinese myth, poetry, food and architecture are interpreted as jazz , conveying the temperament and spirit that integrates the east and west and embraces all rivers, the audience and Ding Xiaoyun, general manager of Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center, were fascinated by it.
Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center is the only overseas branch center of the palace-level jazz brand "Lincoln Jazz", and is also the "new space for performing arts awarded by the world of performing arts. A group of people who love jazz are gathered here, taking promoting jazz as their mission, and have continuously broadened the boundaries over the years to create a shining cultural business card for Shencheng .
More and more people are in love with jazz
"The first time I came into contact with jazz was more than 20 years ago." At the rehearsal site of the Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center, the reporter met with the operation manager Zhu Donghuan. He has been studying classical music since he was a child, and under the introduction of his friends, he entered the world of jazz for the first time. "I was listening to tapes at that time, but I couldn't understand them. I just thought it was very comfortable and comfortable, so I slowly learned and performed."
's unique melody of jazz suddenly grabbed Zhu Donghuan, and what made him amazed and intoxicated was the freedom and imagination of jazz. "It is not like classical music, and must be played completely according to the score; it has a lot of room for imagination, allowing musicians to improvise, and different musicians will play the same song, and there will be completely different effects."
Zhu Donghuan began to perform as a full-time jazz musician in 2002, playing as a bassist; at the end of 2020, he joined the Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center to be responsible for the operation. As a "insider", he witnessed the prosperity of jazz in Shanghai.
"For a long time, Shanghai audiences were unfamiliar with jazz. Even if there were a few familiar people, they believed that this was music that only older people would appreciate." He told reporters, "At the beginning, we were mainly foreign audiences, but now the proportion of domestic audiences is increasing, and many young people can often be seen."
In the past September, Zhu Donghuan participated in more than ten performances, which made him feel very happy. The stage is always his purest and most enjoyable place. One of the performances brought him great surprises.
"The jazz style is varied and needs to have a certain threshold for appreciation. The performance of our day was particularly difficult. People who don't understand jazz may not understand or like it. They just think that the performers on the stage are very busy, but they don't know what they are busy with." Zhu Donghuan made an example, "If we performed such a song 10 years ago, the audience would probably not be able to watch it, but the performance that day was very good, and the audience was very engaged and interacted with us. This shows that our audience's appreciation level is getting better and better."
What makes Zhu Donghuan the most happy is that the development of jazz in Shanghai can be comparable to that of foreign countries. The number of young people entering this industry is increasing, and the jazz industry has entered a track of healthy development. He told reporters that many domestic music colleges have now offered relevant professional courses, such as Shanghai Conservatory of Music , which has established the Department of Modern Instrumental Music and Percussion, with three teaching and research departments, one of which is the jazz teaching and research department. "Good market prospects and the cultivation and incubation of professional talents, these two complement each other, so that jazz can truly take root and prosper in Shanghai."
Appreciate the freedom and inclusiveness of jazz
Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center General Manager Ding Xiaoyun was not a professional musician, but she had long had an indissoluble bond with jazz.
Ding Xiaoyun previously worked in the marketing department of Shanghai Bund Investment Group. After the group obtained the "Bund Central" project where the center is located in 2012, she has been deeply involved in market operations.
"As the second facade of Bund , the "Bund Central" project, which contains four century-old buildings, has been clearly positioned as a "business, tourism, and cultural life show" from the beginning." Speaking of the birth of "Bund Central", Ding Xiaoyun knew it well. "In order to find a cultural project that matches its temperament, we visited it for a long time, and finally finalized the jazz project that also has a century-old history in Shanghai, and reached a cooperation intention with the Lincoln Jazz Center in New York."
Since then, Ding Xiaoyun has truly come into contact with and understand jazz.Since 2013, the Lincoln Jazz Center in New York has been invited to Bund Source to hold a concert. Ding Xiaoyun is responsible for the coordination and contact work, which also gives her the opportunity to come into contact with more world-class jazz bands and masters and feel the spirit and vitality of jazz. In her words, jazz is like "ancient and magical plant with old patterns and new buds, endlessly growing."
When the reporter asked Ding Xiaoyun to choose her favorite jazz performance, she felt embarrassed because she had watched too many good performances at the Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center, so for her, maybe "the best is always in the next one", which is also a reason why jazz keeps surprises her. But when it comes to one of her most memorable scenes, it must be the performance of the Shanghai station of the 2019 American jazz master Winton Marsalis Global Tour.
Ding Xiaoyun told reporters that Winton Marsalis is not only the artistic director of Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center, but also won the Grammy trophy for nine times. In 2019, he brought his global tour to the stage at the Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center, setting a record for his first landing in a "non-concert hall" venue. "The jazz band composed by 18 people was unprecedentedly grand. Not only did it use all the stage space, but some musicians also had to stand in the middle of the audience to perform. The impact brought by zero distance is still very shocking even when I think back now."
What Ding Xiaoyun admired was that Winton Marsalis made a lot of preparations for the performance of the Shanghai Station, and specially created and premiered "Shanghai Suite". "He has a strong interest in Chinese traditional culture . He has read many Tang poems, and has also gone to the Bund, the old city wing, and the old alley to see the lives of Shanghai citizens with his own eyes, and finally turned what he saw and heard into works." "The Bund Swing", "Li Bai Blues", "Hotpot! 《Shanghai Skyline》《Magnolia》…When Chinese myth, poetry, food and architecture are interpreted into jazz, conveying the temperament and charm of integrating the east and west and envious to all rivers, the audience and Ding Xiaoyun were both amazed and fascinated by it.
"It's a coincidence that on the evening of September 30th local time in the United States, Marsalis played the "Shanghai Suite" for the first time at the Lincoln Jazz Center in New York." Ding Xiaoyun said, "Three years ago, he allowed Chinese audiences to experience the traditional Chinese culture expressed in jazz form. Now he brought "Shanghai Suite" to the United States, allowing foreign audiences to experience the jazz charm integrated into Chinese culture."
created the first jazz-themed musical in China
In 2019, Ding Xiaoyun officially served as the general manager of the Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center, coordinating and controlling all aspects of work; in 2020, Zhu Donghuan joined the company as an operation manager and also participated in stage performances. Although they have different professional backgrounds, they also love jazz and hope to make more people fall in love with jazz, which makes them a good partner who hit it off at work.
Since its opening in 2017, the Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center has not only performed wonderful jazz music, but also brought rich performances and activities such as swing dances, talk shows, and parent-child concerts to explore and present more possibilities of jazz performances and attract more people to the theater.
The central team has always had "ambitions" for the jazz performance stage. The first "small" goal is to form your own big band. The so-called big band refers to a band that plays jazz music, with 10 to 25 musicians. The big band has a fixed lineup of performances, including a variety of instruments, suitable for creating and rehearsing original tracks. It requires musicians who play saxophone , trumpet, trombone , vibrato , as well as singers and musicians responsible for rhythm instruments. It is not easy to get together such a team.
After intense preparations, in September 2021, the third anniversary of the establishment of the center, the Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center Big Band officially debuted. This 10-person team brings together the best jazz musicians in Shanghai, among which Zhu Donghuan is the bassist. In the group scene, they performed representative jazz bands from different eras and their own original repertoire.
This year, Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center has new moves.On October 6, the first original all-environmental jazz musical "Jew is My Heart" produced by the center started its long-term resident performance. This is the first jazz-themed musical in China, marking the entry of Lincoln Jazz Shanghai Center into a new track for Chinese musicals.
Ding Xiaoyun told reporters that in 2021, the center launched the incubation of homemade musicals project, trying to innovate more music forms, from "niche" jazz creation to "mass" drama creation and music exploration of different styles. "As our first original musical, "Jie is My Heart" chose the theme of "Youth Dream Chasing" that is close to life and resonates with young audiences. It tells the story of how a group of young people on campus find dreams and stick to their dreams in the journey of pursuing musical dreams."
The creative team of "Jie is My Heart" includes both jazz musicians, promoters and even just enthusiasts. Such a team composition has also collided with great creative enthusiasm. "The members of the center team all like musicals very much. Everyone often jokes about when we can create our own jazz musical." Ding Xiaoyun said, "I originally thought it was a fantasy, but I didn't expect that I stumbled all the way and finally made it happen."
Zhu Donghuan is the music director and arrangement of "Jew is My Heart", responsible for arranging all music according to the plot. He completed the music sample in more than two months. "When a musical is arranged, the workload is large, and the music needs to be tailored, with only lines and no reference, so it is particularly difficult." Zhu Donghuan said that when it comes to rehearsal, the compilation of the songs must be constantly polished and adjusted, and the situation of completely overturning and redoing happens from time to time. The team's goal is to present high-level and high-quality works to the audience.
producer Ding Xiaoyun is a "big boss" character: "If you don't be a boss, you don't know how expensive it is. If you really do a drama, you will know that there are so many details, from actor selection to budget for each prop, you must know what you know."
In the drama, "Jew is My Heart" is a story about pursuing dreams and sticking to dreams; outside the drama, the entire center team is pursuing and sticking to their own dreams. "Jazing can give people a spiritual motivation. This is a real experience when we are with it day and night. We also hope that more people can get such an experience." Ding Xiaoyun is full of confidence in the future of Shanghai jazz culture: "Let more people go to the theater, understand jazz, fall in love with jazz, and spread and promote it like us in the future. This is our motivation and goal to keep moving forward."
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