Coming to the eighth year of the Shenzhen OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival (10.9-10.21), this year a special unit called "Festival in the Festival" was born in the matrix, and the pioneering, free and profound temperament is in line with its "sister" Tomorrow Music Festival.
Before speaking about the masters on stage, we should first talk about the audience. Spectators who are afraid of noise, are dumbfounded, and cannot accept the fleeting beauty of jazz cannot climax with the masters and complete the high-quality scene together.
Thanks to the efforts of the B10 scene to cultivate the audience over the years, the audience on the third day of the festival has long gone beyond the realm of "being able to endure the huge volume" and "knowing how to applaud at the right time". They would comment on the style and performance of each musician, discuss the specific timbres, and the general feeling was that they were getting better.
After the official performance, the Old Paradise Bookstore also has a routine improvisation, and musicians on or off stage are welcome. The audience that stayed behind to pack the small bookstores were veterans who chased the musicians' undiminished free improvisations until the early hours of the morning. The music will soon be forgotten, the notes rolling through the eardrums and the burning sensation of the soul will not.
Three consecutive nights (and of course many more spectators) had the miraculous effect of opening new doors. In the age of jazz decline, the guys on stage (musicians are always young) magically unfolded the river of time in front of us with endless, spark-filled performances.
In particular, the two elders of the "Ganelin Trio" (Ganelin Trio), the sacred "Ganelin Trio" in the hearts of Soviet avant-garde fans, Vladimir Chekasin and Vladimir Tarasov. What they conjures up is a galaxy, flickering with European classical music and traditional folk songs, avant-garde jazz and shamanic rituals, humor dramas, the tune of country entertainers, carnival joy, throat songs, ghostly harmonies carrying radio waves in the air... Stunned the audience.
The three groups of musicians on the last night of October 14 were special. Russian saxophonic alexey Kruglov teamed up with Estonia's most powerful jazz trio, led by Jaak Sooäär, to bring jazz interpretations of classical works by Russian composers a century and a half ago. Last year, the trumpeter Ichinhei, who took the stage with Japanese jazz giant Yosuke Yamashita, brought his own quintet RS5pb this year, showcasing the aesthetics and vitality of a new generation of Japanese jazz musicians. The finale of the mid-section improvised Grand League is wonderful and indescribable, one session at a time, see you next year.
Alexey Kruglov
Alexey Kruglov / Jaak Sooäär quartet
Four years ago, when the Russian new music legend "Karenin Trio" debuted at the OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival, the young Moscow musician Alexey Kruglov succeeded his predecessor as the saxophonist of the new generation of "Galenin Trio".
Although the Garin Trio is a pioneer jazz master, in his personal musical exploration, Alexey Kruglov is difficult to be classified as a pioneer jazz. He walked more like the path of the post-John-Coltrane era, exploring the endless worlds left behind by the death of geniuses.
In 2010, Russian saxophonic genius Alexey Kruglov teamed up with Estonia's most powerful jazz trio, led by Jaak Sooäär, to form the Alexey Kruglov/ Jaak Sooäär Quartet.
In addition to the saxophone, Alexey excels at a variety of instruments, such as flute, trumpet, and more. The British magazine Jazzwise commented on him: This young man may be a genius, and his music is deeply philosophical.
Leading the Jaak Sooäär Quartet, Jaak Sooäär, from Tallinn, Estonia, taught guitar and ensemble techniques in the Jazz Department of the Estonian Academy of Music and Drama in 2001 and became professor in 2010. In 2004, he founded the Estonian Jazz Association, dedicated to promoting jazz in the country and promoting Estonian jazz to the world.
Beginning in 2010, Alexey and Jaak began working together. The band's final scene on their first tour in Estonia was recorded as the album Karate, released by the famous British label Leo Records. Since then, the band has performed extensively in Russia, Estonia and Finland at major festivals, including the Jazzkaar Festival, the IDee Jazz Festival and the Sõru Jazz Festival in Estonia, the Arkhangelsk Jazz Festival and the Yaroslavl Jazz Festival in Russia.
At this OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival, they brought performances that showed the timeless and humorous side of the music.
Alexey Kruglov (first from left) and a jazz trio led by Jaak Sooäär (first from right).
In order to better explain the meaning of "ancient" to the audience, Jaak carried a bundle of music scores from 19th-century Russian composers with him, and told the audience several times during the performance: We play strictly according to the ancient score.
Mussorgsky (three parts in the Exhibition of Drawings), Rimsky-Korsakov (Shechlachad, The Flying Of Wild Bees), Borodin (two passages in the opera Prince Igor) and Barakilev (Nocturne in F minor)... The old score was assembled by their hands into a piece called "The Mighty Five", which entered the "European Jazz Media Chart" in December 2014.
That evening, the musicians gave the audience a vivid lesson: modern improvisational music is not only not an enemy of classical music, but also a very good friend.
These music types vary, depicting different situations and moods. Jaak is a very good teacher, and he stops from time to time to tell the audience about the background of the original work, recreating the dance scenes in the story with jumping notes. When Alexey blew out a buzzing suspicious sound with the saxophone, he crept closer to the attentive partner and caught a "fly" in the air in front of him...
After exploring the spirituality of too much music, this group of musicians brings the audience a secular and lovely message: an important source of music is the depiction of lively and lively life in this world. Alexey's stirring double saxophone playing is undoubtedly the climax of the world's warmth and the joy of life.
Class family peace
RS5pb
Chinese audiences first learned about The Kid's Heart at last year's OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival. Japanese jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita introduced him to the audience through a translator: "In order to play the famous jazz song "I Remember Clifford", I invited the excellent trumpeter Shinpei to join the special quartet. It is an elegy commemorating the genius trumpeter Clifford Brown, who died at the age of 24. ”
Soon, the audience was stunned by the bulging side of the class's heart like a frog. The image of the handsome Japanese trumpeter on the stage is like a phantom, changing rapidly in handsome calm and exaggerated deformation. There are several deep wrinkles on the side of the bulging cheeks, and he often walks with his neck hunched over, completely immersed in the music, and has no time to take care of his own image.
There is no doubt that The Family Ofe was deeply influenced by Miles Davis in the 1960s and 1970s. Born in 1976 in Yakonohei, Aomori Prefecture, Japan, his father was a printmaker and puppet artist who collects numerous vinyl records. In elementary school, he began learning to play trumpets in the school's brass band, and in high school he was fascinated by the gesture of American jazz musician Chet Baker holding a trumpet on the cover of a fashion magazine.
Soon after, he heard about the album by legendary trumpeter Miles Davies in his father's vinyl collection, and his Steamin' with the Miles Davis Quintet (1961) became the album that had the deepest impact on the class.
In 2004, Henzao Shinpei made his official debut as a member of the improvisational band URB. Soon in 2006, he quickly owned his own band with outstanding personal skills, and he and four members, Hakuei Kim, Takashi Tetsui and Daisuke Yoshioka, formed the "Class Family Shinpei 4 Piece Band", which mainly performed the original songs of The Class Family Shinpei, and was active in various Live houses in Tokyo and Yokohama.
In 2009, the first album of "Class Family Heart Ping 4 Piece Band" was released by Rambling Records under the title Distorted Grace. In 2011, Shinpei Kakuga released his second album Sector b, which was produced by the famous Japanese saxophonist/singer Seiko Kikuchi. The album not only features Shinpei's works by Shinpei Kikuchi, but also contains Lady Gaga's Poker Face, which was transcribed by Shinpei. Shinpei is also a member of "Kikuchi Nariko Dub-Sextet", DCPRG, and wuja Bin BIN, led by former Beat Crusaders member Keitaimo, as well as co-musicians with sugizo, guitarist of the famous rock band Luna Sea.
In 2012, when the band was invited to the Nango Summer Jazz Festival, the band added a guitarist, Takuya Tanaka, and Nakajima replaced Hakuei Kim as keyboardist. As a result, the "Class Family Shinpei 4 Piece Band" evolved into a quintet band and continued its activities under the name RS5pb.
In 2013, the band's live album 4AM added new inspiration and content to the band's past two studio albums. Overall, his first album, Twisted Beauty, was at the heart of its aesthetic. The class of hearts has never been as brazen, humorous, or flattering as Louis Armstrong'. His playing is flawless and won't let you hear heavy breathing.
Even if you lead the band to challenge the rapids together, there will never be a situation of breathlessness, scrambling, and instrumental fighting.
He and his friends gave in to each other within the beautiful musical structure and achieved each other. The shining trumpet played by the class family is not the absolute protagonist of the band, its loud and hoarse, excited and sad, and the rare childish "wow wow" naughtiness are all shrouded in tranquility. Not only him, but also the guitarist Takuya Tanaka, the swell of the paragraph is also very solemn, these are probably the "Japanese identity" that Shinpei, as a new generation of Japanese jazz musicians, adheres to the same as his predecessors.
Mid-section improvisational Grand Alliance
Every musician who stays last to participate in the mid-festival can choose to take the stage to participate in the improvisation.
Truly free improvisation is hard to describe, because the immersive also forgets, like flowing water.
But the vitality of life contained in the improvisation has been injected into the body of everyone present, becoming a physical memory that will never be taken away.