Jazz opens discourse with China

On tour, the musicians will take part in peer-to-peer activities with local young people, musicians and non-musicians alike. Those encounters, she said, frequently outlast the concerts in the players' memories.

Previous visits have taken the ensemble to Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Shanghai Oriental Art Center in Shanghai, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing, and Huafa and the CPAA Grand Theatre in Zhuhai. "We've found Chinese audiences to be exceptionally welcoming, engaged and enthusiastic," said Massey.

She said Shanghai and Beijing have long-established music communities, and the ensemble's return gives its members a chance to encounter Chinese culture and history directly while meeting local audiences and young people.

Shanghai was a jazz city in the 1920s and 1930s; Beijing had a boom of its own in the 1990s. Jazz is growing as a niche yet increasingly popular genre in China. The current rise is driven by live-house culture and by an audience that skews young.

New York-based Blue Note Jazz Club opened its first Chinese branch in Beijing in 2016, and Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai opened in 2019. The JZ Festival, which debuted in 2005, has become the largest jazz festival in China and the second largest in Asia, and the NCPA co-sponsors the Taihu Jazz Festival at its stage art center in Beijing's Tongzhou district. Scenes have since spread to other cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xi'an and Chongqing.

San Francisco has its own stake in that exchange.

"We're honored to be one of the final stops before NYO Jazz heads to China," said TJ Gorton, director of marketing at SFJAZZ, a non-profit jazz organization, noting the city's long cultural and historical ties with China.

SFJAZZ has been building out SFJAZZ At Home, a growing library of performances and educational content, much of it free, that reaches audiences outside the SFJAZZ Center. Connecting with Chinese audiences, students, educators and institutions remains a priority, Gorton said, and the organization wants to pursue it through digital programming and direct educational partnerships.

Jazz was born in America, he added, but younger musicians around the world are increasingly blending it with their own traditions.

Massey said the educational and cultural activities surrounding the concerts are intended to create opportunities for dialogue, collaboration and learning. Because jazz depends on listening, communication and collective creation, she said, it is particularly suited to encounters in which young people may begin with different backgrounds but discover shared interests.

Meyer, asked how she plans to approach musicians she cannot speak to, quoted the trumpeter who leads Jazz at Lincoln Center.

"Wynton Marsalis is famous for saying that jazz music is a great metaphor for how we should interact with others in real life, in the sense that, to play good jazz music, you have to always be listening and always be lifting up other people," she said.

When another player solos and she is comping behind them, the wrong move is the flashy one. "What I need to be aiming to do is play something that will support them and uplift them." The same, she said, goes for a conversation: listen first, and let that inform what you say.

Asked what he wants a Chinese audience to take away, Clark did not talk about technique.

"For me, I really want to communicate the joy that music brings to me, and the joy that music brings to all of us — not only as individuals, but as a group," he said. "Being immersed in music and in the joy of music is one of the most special things in the world. I would love for everybody to be able to experience that at some point."