Jazz opens discourse with China

Backstage at the SFJAZZ Center on Aug 4, Malcolm Clark and Annie Meyer were already dressed for the bandstand: black jackets, red pants and black canvas shoes.

A trip to China was ahead of them.

Clark, 18, a trombonist from Tuftonboro, New Hampshire, had traveled outside the United States before, but never this far. Meyer, also 18, a guitarist from Boston, was thinking about Chinese food, coffee recommendations passed along by a guest artist and the technology she had heard so much about.

But when the two musicians talked about what they most hoped to find on the other side of the Pacific, they kept coming back to something they already knew how to do: listen.

"I know it's cliche, but when people say jazz is a language that can be understood by everyone, I think that's like a connective tissue that connects both cultures," Meyer said. "You're able to communicate with audiences in a way that you couldn't by speaking."

That idea is at the heart of this summer's tour by Carnegie Hall's National Youth Orchestra Jazz, or NYO Jazz, a band of players aged 16 to 19 chosen through a national audition process.

The Aug 4 concert in San Francisco was the ensemble's last US stop before they left for a tour running through Aug 15 with stops in Taichung, Shanghai and Beijing. This summer's repertoire spans classic works and contemporary compositions.

For the young players, the trip is both a concert tour and an experiment in person-to-person communication.

"When I travel outside of the country, I am always really happy to get to know what the locals think about the world and see other people's perspectives," said Clark. "I really hope that we can kind of act as ambassadors of American music for a Chinese audience." He started piano in the third grade and picked up the trombone a year later. This fall, he will start at the Eastman School of Music.