Busy Weekend - Friday

I've only been back in China for a little over two weeks and it seems like all of my free time is spent with gig-related activities. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining! Usually a couple shows more than covers my rent and utilities for the month. Since Friday, I played four gigs; 3 on sax and one on keys. Each brought it's own surprises, frustrations and tasty tidbits of insight into Chinese culture.

The madness began Friday afternoon at the a high-rise on Renmin South Road. As I headed up to the 18th floor, I double checked my gear: sax, neckstrap, reeds, play-a-long cd...ok, I'm set. I was greeted by a woman who looked Asian, by spoke English without an accent. This was helpful, as my chinese is not up to snuff when dealing with business matters. She told me that the gig would be one of the strolling saxophonist type. Zai jian Jamey. Fortunately, only about 20 people showed up. The event was the opening of a French architect's Chengdu branch. I played about 10 min. as people came in, waited out the program, then played one more tune after. Easy! Ok...got the money, on the the next show.

It was the second anniversary of local ex-pat hotspot "The Bookworm" (coffee house/library/bar). Philip had arranged the whole night: three sets, four musicians, one ipod. Keyboardist Fu, the ipod and myself played all the sets while Philip was in and out dealing with his other nightly haunts. Our featured vocalist was Aussie and Bookworm mini-celeb, Lauren. We opened the show with Philip, Fu and myself. After a few tunes, Phil left Fu and I to fend for ourselves. No problem. By the second set, a good crowd, mostly made up of Brits, had developed. This set would be Fu, myself and Lauren. She had five tracks and i had six, all on the ipod for easy control. As we got up on the stage, the already slighty intoxicated audience began chanting 'lau-ren, lau-ren'. This seemed to give her some courage as I put on the first tune. Everything seemed good as she started singing. Then she stopped...but the singing didn't. It turned out she put the wrong track on the ipod; WITH the vocals. She was a pro though, on to Nelly Furtado's 'Like a Bird' and the audience had forgotten the little mishap. The next 45 minutes went smoothly enough as I played a few jazz tunes with Fu. Lauren finished off the set with 'Son of a Preacher Man' and 'Imagine'. I just wished we could have had a rehearsal. Philip got back from his rounds at about 11pm, just in time for the last set. By this time the party was in full swing. After a rousing 'Happy Birthday' song and thanks yous from Peter the owner, people began dancing and carousing rather fiercly. Philip had planned for this and programmed uptempo dance numbers for the last set. We played for about another hour. As the audience was quite inebriated they really seemed to enjoy us. At once point a couple Chinese girls got up on stage and became the band dancers. This was definitely the most fun of the whole evening. I finally got out of there around 1am. It was a pretty busy day with teaching 5 students in the morning and the gig in the afternoon. A good warm-up for the weekend; Real Estate gigs on Saturday and Sunday. Blog to come. Now i must sleep.

SCCM Chinese Orchestra Concert

Last night the Sichuan Conservatory of Music opened it's concert season. The featured group was the SCCM Chinese Orchestra. This is an eclectic group of made up of primarily traditional Chinese instruments mixed with the a few Western instruments to fill out the sound. Students and teachers alike performed together. Before the concert began, the audience was instructed to stand and applaud as the tenured faculty and government officials entered. The only problem was that these guests were were not very punctual. The concert was scheduled to begin at 8pm. It was not until close to 8:45 that the these special guests arrived. Prior to their arrival there were numerous times that people mistook a latecomer for one of these VIPs. Needless to say, we practiced madly applauding many times before they actually arrived.

Finally, the concert began. Before each piece, a woman came out to preface the work and introduce the conductor and featured soloist. There were four different maestros and four faculty soloists throughout the night. There was a particular uproar after the intermission as a female conductor was intruduced. I learned that this is quite rare in China.

I had never heard a group like this before. To help you picture the instrumentation: There was a large section of about 30 Erhu players located normally where violins and cellos are placed in a Western orchestra. In the center, there were 3 Guzheng and 3 Guqin behind them. Behind the Erhu on stage left was a section of Ruan (Da and Zhong varieties. Stage right contained Chinese-style cellos and basses. The first riser held a section of 16 Pipa. On the next riser was the wind section comprised of about ten Dizi of different sizes, 3 shen and 2 Dashen. The next riser held the Chinese oboe, Suona, tenor saxophone and baritone saxophone (my student!). The final riser was reserved for the percussion section: Daigu in the center, a set of timpani, Bangu, Biangu, Bianzhong (cloud gong), suspended cymbals, high hat hat a grand piano.

The sound of the orchestra was unique to say the least. I was surprised how much sound was produced. Even though there was no brass section, this group was quite loud! Even though many of the instruments have a nasal quality (i.e. suona, dizi, erhu) the balance and blend was extraorinary.

Seven works from local composers were featured in the concert. As mentioned earlier, four of these featured soloists. I was most impressed with the Shen player. This instrument has a very unique sound; almost like that of a miniature organ! The Zhong Ruan soloist was also very interesting. This 4-string instrument is similar to the mixture between a guitar and a banjo. The other soloist played dizi, and erhu. I wish I could post videos of the whole concert, but the files are too big!

Gig at Deyang

Every once in a while, here in China, I'm lucky enough to land a gig or two. Usuall y, I don't know anything about where the gig is, or what's going to hap pen...and it was no different today. My friend Philip has been performing for many years in China; he booked this one. W e met around 6:45am, then met up with a bus in North Chengdu. This is pretty ordinary for gigs i n China. Usually, all of the performers are provided a bus if the show is a little out of the way. Today we traveled to a city north of Chengdu named Deyang (duh-yang). Today, the bus was filled with a variety of people: swing dancers, magicians, a couple cages of bird, an opera singer, a couple managers, and of course us, the band. Bedsides Philip and myself, Chad Sinclair (guitarist) and Fu (keyboardist) made up the group. The drive was about an hour from Chengdu to Deyang. As we drove through downtown Deyang, I noticed a line of artillery guns in front a new building. I had just about forgotten about them, then about an hour later we were all startled as they were fired for about five minutes straight. Philip assured me that this is common for the grand opening of many buisnesses in China. Why can't they just hire a marching band or something? The gig itself was at a huge 5 star hotel. Like most China gigs, we weren't exactly sure what or who we were playing for, but it was most likely a real estate company. We had about an hour and a half before the first set, so as Philip did the necessary setup, the rest of us got a chance to explore a little bit. As you can see, it they spared no expense. In the first set we play all instrumental numbers. After a break, Philip sang Cotton Fields and Wu Suo Wei. As we started the second set, the place cleared out as they announced that the buffet was open. That was okay with us, as we don't usually rehearse before these gigs(although we did rock it). Philip's driver took us back to the city in his little red Suzuki. I don't think I'll ever smell the same.

End of Week One

Already a week come and gone. A lot has happened! Due to the fact that I arrived two weeks into the semester, my students were eager to begin lessons. Last Sunday during a meeting with professor of saxophone Li Yusheng, he told me that I would be teaching two more students than last year. This is due to his acceptance of 26 new saxophone students at the conservatory. Now the total is more than 100! My current studio is now 15 students, 2 first year, 4 second year, 2 third year and 7 fourth year seniors. On top of that I will also coach a saxophone quartet made up of 4 of the seniors.

Sunday night I contacted all of my returning students. It's very easy in China because all of the students have cell phones. One mass text message to all of them instructing them to stop by my office on Monday did the job. My three new students were contacted by the modern music office. I was looking forward to see my kids again!

On Monday, like clockwork, my students lined up outside my 14th floor office to meet with me. We scheduled lessons for this past week and talked about repertoire for the semester (and seniors for the the final exam). Next week will be a little crazy because the Chinese provencial gorvernment will come to observe teachers and the facillities. This means that not only to my students have to be extra punctual, but lessons will be double in length...yay. Intermitantly throughout Monday afternoon, I met my new students. Two were freshman: Zhou Yuan Xing and Feng He Fong. Feng spoke relatively good english, but Zhou was a little shy. I was surprised that my Chinese was good enough to schedule a lesson time and ask if he had prepared any music. My third new student, Liu Tao, is replacing Wang Shan Shan who graduated last year. As a side note, Wang is now residing in her hometown, Qingdao, where she is working for the local orchestra and playing in a saxophone quartet.

During the week lessons went well! Surprisingly most of my students HAD practiced over the summer, and some had already completed the pieces I gave them. Looks like this semester will be a good one. My goal for the following semester is to hold a recital feature my studio. It's disappointing to me that this school does not do this kind of thing on a regular basis. It seems like if you are majoring in music performance you should actually PERFORM! This is a trend I hope to start.

In other news, I am in the process of preparing for a recital aiming for November. Before I left last year, I had been working with pianist Xiong Lian. She is a fine musician and I am very excited to collaborate with this year. My tentative progam includes works from: Yoshimatsu, Harbison, Boutry, Noda and Heiden.

In my every day life, I've pretty much settled in to my new apartment. Yes, I will make a blog about this complete with pics and video....SOON! Most nights I'm whisked off to restaurants with my students or friends catching up. It really is great to be back! Not too much has changed. There are still skyscrapers popping up everywhere, farmers selling produce in the streets, taxi-drivers driving like maniacs and too many people. The only difference is, this time it feels a little more like home.

Autumn Moon Festival

Happy Autumn Moon Festival! Like a lot of Chinese holidays, this one coincides with the lunar calendar. Pictured above is a traditional moon festival gift...moon cakes! They're delicious little cakes filled with meat, vegetables or fruit. This traditional holiday is very important signifying the end of the summer harvest. The Chinese celebrate by eating mooncakes, lighting various lanterns, planting autumn trees and having parties in the streets. Last year I didn't know about this holiday until it was over, so i made it a point to go out to the river this year. It was crazy! In this video you can see a little of what was happening. I walked a couple blocks to a bridge on the Jin River. There, around 9:30pm the festival was in full swing. You can see little flower boats in the river with candles lit. Later in the night there were hundred of these in all different shapes and sizes. I really liked the miniature hot-air balloons. You can buy these for about 20rmb ($3) People were constantly setting these off and whole sky was dotted with these floating lanterns. I thought it was funny that these balloons were made out of tissue paper. Subsequently, many caught a spark and burnt up before they left the ground! At one point, I was standing by the river taking a video. Paying no attention to was was happening around me some people started yelling at me in Chinese. As I turned to see what all the commotion was about, one of these little balloons almost ran into my head! I guess this just adds to the fun of it all.
In the crowded streets you could buy home made cotton candy, pieces of sugar cane, popcorn, little light up devil horns and of course the lanterns. There were dancers, people singing and general good times. Besides the crowds of Chendgu-folk, there were also tons of animals. Everyone brought their pet dog or cat to join in the festivities. People seemed extra friendly...even to me a foreigner! If you're ever around China, or Asia towards the middle September be sure to check out this holiday.

Moon Festival at Anshun Bridge

Next....My Very Chinese Apartment

Back in Chengdu

On Friday, September 12th 9:30 I arrived in the Chengdu, international ariport. It was an easy trip; only about eighteen hours travel time. The eleven hour flight from Vancouver BC to Beijing was especially nice because the flight was so underbooked that I had the whole middle row of five seats to myself! Saxophone teachers Guo Yang, Lin Yi and my student Li Peiyu were waiting for me at the terminal. It was really great to see them again. Especially Li Peiyu, as he had travelled to Athens, GA this summer to audition at UGA. As we exited the airport, my senses were overwhelmed and memories began to return. It' great to be back!

I hadn't yet found an apartment in Chengdu, so I was planning to either find a hotel or bunk with Peiyu's family. The first hotel we tried was very small and inexpensive (about $16 a night). Unfortunately I was turned down due to some new law requiring foreigners to stay in 3 star hotels or higher...I didn't buy it. However, as we went to three other similar hotels, all turned me down to the same reason. Luckily the conservatory had an affiliated 3 star hotel, the Philharmonic. It was only a little more pricey, but the rooms were much nicer and I was too tired to go anywhere else (it was around 11:30pm by then). After i got a room, I settled in, bought a SIM recharge card, and contacted some students to take me around to find an apartment the next day. It must have been around 12:30pm before I actually laid down. What a day!

Next part...
Finding an Apartment in Chengdu

China, here I come.

Upon much ado, I am finally going back to Chengdu, China. I will leave Thursday, August 11th 9:15am and will arrive in Chengdu Friday, August 12th 9:30pm. Once again, I will be teaching at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music for the school year (until July). I'm looking forward to another exciting year. Six of my students from last year will be 4th year seniors. This will be a great challenge for me as they will have to prepare a thesis and final jury. I am also looking forward to meeting my new students and studying Chinese. When I arrive in Chengdu, I will meet Guo Yang at the airport. He is the saxophone teacher at SCCM's affiliated high school. His students are always outstanding and he is a very good friend of mine. It will be good to see him again! There's a rumor that my students want to take me to hot pot Friday night. I guess that will be about 6:30am Oregon time, hot pot for breakfast sounds interesting.

Wish me luck on my flight! Check back on my blog more often as more blogs and pictures are coming.