It's always a time for a taste of oriental flavour featuring contemporary Chinese music in China Beat on China Radio International. But today it's a time when the west meets the east. A Shanghai-affiliated Australian jazz composer, John Huie, presents a bunch of original compositions, in which he explores the use of traditional Chinese instruments to realize the essence of western Jazz music.

For some direct idea of this project, the 1421 Suite contained in the album “New Shanghai Collection Vol. 1" played by the band The Yellow Music Ensemble, let's first listen to the song, Vivace for a brief encounter.

(Vivace)

That's the song Vivace, the opening track of the album, New Shanghai Collection, Vol. 1, initiated by the Australian composer John Huie, but played by a group of

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, John Huie has had a musical background spanning an array of styles. After studying at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with guitar as his main instrument, John immediately began a composition career with commissions from various music bodies. Keen to experiment with different acoustic instruments and styles, he later moved to Hong Kong.

But it was after a visit to Shanghai in 2002 that John decided to move there to passionately produce a collection of old Chinese jazz songs with the local musicians.

The result was the album series, “Shanghai Jazz". Since then he has remained in Shanghai cultivating the usually neglected but rather interesting local musical elements.

Here's the song Give Me a Kiss, featuring the local vocal extraordinaire, Coco - Zhao Ke.

(Give Me a Kiss)

That's Give Me a Kiss, a Chinese favorite based on the music of Patsy Cline's early 50's Hit "Seven Lonely Days" with a new title and lyrics, featuring Coco, Zhao Ke as the leading vocalist.

Actually Coco himself is a well known figure in today's jazz scene and has been hailed for his subtle singing and complicated composition both home and abroad. These two years he's also performed on the stage of the annual Montreal International Jazz Festival. The song is from the album Shanghai Jazz series Vol. 1, the first release initiated by John Huie.

But for this pure instrumental project New Shanghai Collection, John assembled a contemporary ensemble with a hot rhythm section. Through working with various Chinese traditional instrumentalists over the years, it became obvious to him some traditional Chinese instruments were much more adaptable to modern harmonic structures and acceptable to the western ear. In particular the Gu Zheng, one of the oldest string instruments in the world, and the Yeung Qin, which also has a long history and basically looks like the inside of a piano. Both of these Chinese instruments seemed versatile enough to perform with a cello and guitar, or perhaps a double bass and violin.

In these Chinese flavoured tunes on this album New Shanghai, Gu Zheng and Yeung Qin contribute most melodic work while blended with some improvisation from the work of piano and violin. John Huie even included Pi Pa, the small pear-shaped Chinese guitar, Zhu Di - or bamboo flue, and the Suo Na, which sounds like a loud oboe.

Have a taste of the blending of so many instruments, as well as the fusion of the two methodologies of western and eastern music. Here's The Gu Zheng Trio.

(The Gu Zheng Trio)

While starting to write the music for this project, John Huie was reading a book “1421: The Year China Discovered the World" by Gavin Menzies. According to the composer, while reading he would feel in the back of his head powerful drums emerging, accompanying a driving pentatonic theme coming from ancient Chinese instruments. All of these inspired him to compose a suite of the same name.

Here's an adapted version of a celebrated Chinese tune, Butterfly Lovers, but in a rather modern jazzy arrangement.

(Butterfly Lovers)

During the 1920s, jazz was racialized and assigned to the lowest rungs of the musical evolutionary ladder. The Shanghai Conservatory used to consider jazz to be ‘a bad form of Western music' much the same manner as were Chinese folk tunes; ‘primitive music composed with a pentatonic scale'. This is obviously not the case in the 21st century.

As to the band that actually performs the music on this album, The Yellow Music Ensemble, it is mostly composed of instrumentalists born in China. Feng Yu on Gu Zheng, Niu Fanjing on Yeung Qin. Hung Beixing on Cello, Peng Fei on violin, Zhu Haiming on double or fretless bass, Zhu Weilong on Suo Na, Zhang Yan on Pipa, Zhao Qi on bamboo flute, Chu Weiming on drums and percussion, as well Radu Aureliu and Jason Cheng on Piano. Such a big lineup as a whole realized John Huie's ambition of describing the modern instrumental fusion of Chinese and Western musical styles.

We wish you'll like some of the songs on New Shanghai Collection Vol. 1 featured on today's China Beat on China Radio International. If you have suggestions or ideas, you can reach us by sending your email to Chinabeat@crifm.com.