As Freespace Jazz Fest returns next week with some of the brightest stars on the firmament of contemporary music, Mariella Radaelli asks participating musicians and scholars if the festival can help raise Hong Kong’s profile on the international map of jazz.
The Freespace Jazz Fest returns to the West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK) on Thursday for its sixth edition, with a lineup that’s perhaps more stellar than any other jazz event Hong Kong has seen in recent years.
The American jazz musician and composer Herbie Hancock, who performs on Oct 27, is probably the hottest ticket in this star-studded program. Members of Hong Kong’s live-music community are understandably elated at the chance to hear the 84-year-old legend perform live. “It means a lot, as he is one of the last jazz giants to come out of the golden era of jazz,” says violinist and composer Kung Chi-shing who is also head of contemporary performance at WestK.
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Also performing on Oct 27 is four-time Grammy-winner Antonio Sánchez, one of the most masterful drummers on the international jazz scene today. In Birdman Live, he plays the drum score from the soundtrack of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 film. Sánchez composed the furious jazz score of the Academy Award-winning dark comedy. For the live show, he improvises and riffs on the score, responding to the film playing on a large screen with his energetic drumming, as he alternates between steady, pulsating beats and soft tremors.
“I started doing the show as part of the Oscars publicity campaign. It came out great and people loved it. So we decided to keep going with it,” says the Mexican-born drummer on a video call from his New York home.
Sánchez says that Iñárritu wanted him to come up with a score for Birdman by responding to the visuals in real time. Hence the Birdman Live show is an attempt to improvise on a score that was itself composed improvisationally. “By now I know the movie intimately. I know every movement and every piece of dialogue. Hence I can do a more precise version,” Sánchez explains. And yet each show is unique. “I get inspired by the place where I’m playing, the audience reactions and the venue’s acoustics. That is why every show is completely different.”
He is looking forward to performing at the Freespace Jazz Fest. “Hong Kong is more interesting than New York. It is so alive,” he says with a smile. “The people of Hong Kong are very soulful. I have a great time every time I come back to the city.”
Local legend
Freespace Jazz Fest opens on Thursday with a performance by iconic Hong Kong-born jazz pianist Ted Lo. A festival staple, this time Lo performs alongside two of the city’s finest new-generation jazz musicians: double-bassist Nelson Fung and drummer Dean Li.
Lo made his mark in the demanding ’80s New York jazz scene. “I am a jazz man, so I love New York,” he says. However, by the ’90s, Lo had started accepting commissions to arrange the music for local pop projects. During the frequent back and forth between New York and Hong Kong, he fell in love with his hometown all over again. “I realized I didn’t want to be elsewhere,” Lo admits.
Music critics have called him Hong Kong’s godfather of jazz piano music. Lo gives full credit to his parents who supported his initiation into jazz music at a very young age. When he went to study music composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the ’70s, there was no jazz scene in Hong Kong to speak of.
“The big leap in Hong Kong’s jazz scene happened some 15 years ago, after the young jazz musicians who had been to music schools in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe began coming back to the city,” says Kung, explaining his reasons behind including a number of musicians who incorporate elements from outside the scope of classical jazz in the festival lineup.
One of these returnees is Patrick Lui, also a Berklee College alumnus. He is performing as part of the eponymous Patrick Lui Jazz Orchestra, and will share the stage with the Cantopop band RubberBand from Oct 25–26.
Young and beautiful
Lo highly recommends the “incredible young talent”, Joey Alexander from Indonesia. A jazz pianist and composer, Alexander, 21, is known for his eclectic tastes, drawing inspiration from the works of the Italian composer Ennio Morricone, American singer-songwriter John Mayer, American composer and pianist Burt Bacharach, and American blues rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter Bonnie Raitt.
Alexander is certainly not the only artist on the festival lineup to experiment with his music.
Lui likes mixing classical Western, traditional Chinese music, and jazz. Rémi Panossian from France is into a lyrical variety of jazz, imbued with rock energy and a cheerful groove. Ariel Bart from Israel is a rising chromatic harmonica player and composer who mixes contemporary European jazz with musical elements from the Middle East.
“For me, jazz is a constantly evolving genre with one fundamental element: improvisation,” says Kung, explaining his reasons behind choosing a number of musicians who incorporate elements from outside the scope of classical jazz. “I am comfortable engaging ethnic or experimental musicians as long as they employ improvisations in their music-making.”
Freespace Jazz Fest is offering daily free shows featuring 40 bands. “All of these bands display a personal approach to what they consider jazz,” says Kung, adding that Richiman and Groove Nice, an American-style blues band from South Korea; Pakshee, a fusion and world music band from India; and Reikan Kobayashi, a Japanese shakuhachi jazz flute player, might be the ones to watch out for.
An inclusive space
But what is Freespace Jazz Fest expected to achieve for Hong Kong’s jazz music practitioners and enthusiasts?
“It is a big boost to developing Hong Kong’s jazz scene,” Kung says. Among other things, the festival has disproved the widely held notion that jazz is an elitist music genre. “Freespace Jazz Fest has helped increase the audience for jazz to a great extent in this city.”
As far as local jazz musicians are concerned, they have everything to gain by getting to share the stage with living legends.
Lo says that Hong Kong jazz musicians jamming with international heavyweights “is a testament” to the confidence and competence achieved by the former lot. Such an opportunity also serves as a major confidence boost for most musicians. “I can imagine the excitement, especially among young musicians.”
Jazz scholar and composer Daniel Chu, who is also the author of the scholarly work Digging the Hong Kong Jazz Scene: Past, Present and People, published this year by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, believes that the fact that the Freespace Jazz Fest is getting bigger and better with each passing year shows that Hong Kong has the potential to shape up as the epicenter of jazz in Asia.
Sánchez concurs: “Japan has been at the forefront of jazz music for a long time, but Hong Kong is the new jazz destination. Every jazz artist who plays there loves the experience. In Hong Kong, I can team up and play with any local musician.”
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For their part, Hong Kong jazz musicians too enjoy jamming with fellow musicians who can bring a different note to the mix. “It is the way we learn jazz here,” says Lo, who totally loves sharing the stage with the musicians he has mentored.
In Hong Kong jazz is not only about cross-genre experiments but also about cross-generation performances.
If you go
Freespace Jazz Fest 2024
Dates: Oct 24 - 27
Venue: The Box, Freespace and Wonderland, West Kowloon Art Park, West Kowloon Cultural District, Tsim Sha Tsui
