But mention "the Duke," and local Chinese think of British royalty. Taipei record stores are crammed with current top hits from American and British rock charts, but jazz titles are as easy to find as Dreyer's ice cream in the Gobi desert. Even when jazz made an occasional appearance in always-popular American movies, the music inspired little more than detached curiosity.
Many people were therefore taken by surprise in October 1988 when a major jazz happening—by anyone's standards—took Taipei by musical storm. Billed the Parliament Superband, a 15-member ensemble featuring Ahmad Jamal, Johnny Griffin, James Moody, and Diane Schuur held forth for more than four hours to a packed house at the Taipei Social Education Hall. If jazz-loving expats kept pinching themselves during the concert to make sure it was real, it seemed no less amazing that the majority of the sell-out crowd was made up of young Chinese who were obviously enjoying every moment.
The concert's success stimulated debate over whether Taiwan's faddish youth had finally added jazz to their lives. Or was this just a flash event, the mixture of good publicity and luck? Could jazz acts appear in Taiwan more frequently than Halley's comet?
The answer was forthcoming, though not immediate. On a sultry Sunday this past August, a Mike Abene/Bill Kirchner duo and the Chick Corea Akoustic Band gave practically back-to-back concerts in Taipei. Sound a little like a New Orleans jazz festival? Actually, their appearance on the same day was a coincidence, as the concerts were arranged by different sponsors and took place at separate performance halls.
The New Aspect Promotion Corporation was the principal sponsor of Chick Corea and his group. Over the past few years, New Aspect has tottered on the verge of bankruptcy. This is not the result of poor management, but is due rather to the willingness of New Aspect president Hsu Po-yun to pay fantastic sums in order to bring top name performers to Taiwan. While some people consider Hsu's methods a bit on the excessive side, most respect his courage and willingness "'to stick his neck out (and open his wallet) to improve the quality of the performing arts in Taiwan.
Corea's two-night stand was no exception. For an undisclosed sum, said to run into millions of New Taiwan dollars, Hsu brought America's top jazz act to Taipei's National Concert Hall. Tickets were not cheap. To offset the expense, a good segment of the first floor tickets sold for the equivalent of US$80 a pop. But money was only part of the problem. The Akoustic Band squeezed Taiwan into their schedule only after cutting two performances from the Osaka segment of their Japan tour, a favor arranged by one of Hsu's friends who happens to be Corea's Japan agent.
Hsu also had a difficult time convincing the rather conservative programming committee of the National Concert Hall to allow the concert in the first place, since they viewed jazz as something akin to hard rock. Asked if such a costly production was worth the risk, Hsu says: "Perhaps I was taking a bit of a chance. But I felt that if I was going to bring jazz to Taiwan, I was going to bring only the best. "
Are the Chinese ready for jazz? "I think the people in Taiwan have shown themselves to be very open and receptive to new things, including music," Hsu says. "There's no cultural gap when it comes to Chinese appreciating jazz. It's just a question of time and exposure. Besides, many of our students have studied abroad. They come back not only with academic and technical knowledge, but also with a more sophisticated understanding of American culture. Many of them were exposed to jazz in the States, and they will be a positive influence in spreading its popularity."
If ticket sales and audience response are valid criteria of success, then Hsu cannot complain about Corea's Akoustic Band. Despite ticket prices three times higher than the Parliament concert a year earlier, the 2,000-seat Concert Hall was 90 percent full on both nights. As for the performances, the audience loved every minute.
The trio, consisting of Chick Corea on piano, John Patittucci on acoustic bass, and Dave Weckl on drums, gave the audience ample doses of the inspired playing which garnered them recognition as the best jazz group in the United States for 1988. The program was an eclectic one, mixing reinterpretations of traditional jazz standards, including the John Coltrane composition "Bessie's Blues" and the Duke Ellington classic "Sophisticated Lady." They also played original Chick Corea compositions like "Morning Sprite," "Circles," and "T.B.C." (Terminal Baggage Claim), and even a Bach-inspired finale called "Three Quartets."
The group's frequent improvisations and solos showed the versatility of the musicians both individually and as a group. Throughout the evening the trio led the responsive audience to progressively higher and higher levels of jazz appreciation, until an encore of Corea's ever popular "Spain" brought the howling crowd to their feet.
Backstage after the concert, the band spoke enthusiastically about the evening's performance. Asked if they played down to the mostly Chinese audience, the brilliant young bassist Patittucci said: "Not in the least. We played it straight, just like we would in Europe and the States, and the audience stayed with us. In fact, I thought the performance was one of our better ones—there were some really inspired moments. We had a lot of fun out there tonight."
What about the quality of Chinese audiences? "For me there is no such thing as a good or bad audience," Corea said. "People of different cultures respond differently, and for me that makes for a very rich world. Freedom is the keynote of our whole lives, so the variety of people is really something to enjoy. The audience tonight started out conservatively, but they grew by leaps and bounds from the beginning of the concert. By the end, they were very warm and receptive. It was great."
The National Concert Hall turned out to be an acceptable venue as well. "These kind of halls are always a little difficult for us, because as beautiful as they are, they are not built for our kind of music," Corea said.
"The reverb time is very long and more suited for an orchestra. We play more notes and a little bit louder, so sometimes it can get a bit washy unless the sound system is set just right. For that reason it was a bit tricky tonight. But I thought that the overall quality of the sound was very good."
Earlier the same day, on the other side of town, audiences were in the midst of another exciting jazz event. In the sixth floor recital hall of the new Evergreen Department Store, American jazz greats Mike Abene and Bill Kirchner were teaming up for an afternoon of hot jazz.
A brilliant jazz pianist, Abene started his career almost 30 years ago with the Maynard Ferguson band. Since then, besides producing his own solo records, he has played with or written for practically everybody who is anybody in jazz, including Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Thad Jones, Joe Williams, Ester Phillips, and Liza Minnelli.
Bill Kirchner, a multi-reed man who heads the popular Bill Kirchner Nonet, has received critical acclaim in both the United States and Europe. In recent years his name has appeared regularly in Downbeat's Annual International Critic's Poll for his playing and his arrangements.
Since these versatile musicians have heavy schedules in the States, it is rare to hear them play together anywhere. Taipei audiences were especially fortunate to have the opportunity to hear them on this, their first trip to Asia. With Abene pounding the ivories and Kirchner alternating between sax, tenor sax, and flute, they played a program that mixed classic jazz standards and contemporary compositions, including their own.
Two pieces in the program written by Wayne Shorter, of Weather Report fame, no doubt struck a resonant chord in the Chinese audience. They were called, aptly enough, "House of Jade" and "Mahjong." In a rather unusual but refreshing change, Abene and Kirchner decided to go without the standard rhythm section of bass and/or drums for both of their performances.
"We didn't want to put anybody in there just for the sake of having a rhythm section," Abene said afterwards. "The absence of a rhythm section can make for much more interesting and varied musical expression. Of course, many audiences expect a rhythm section, and the lack of one puts greater demands on the audience since they have to listen more carefully."
Audience response to the Abene/Kirchner trio was enthusiastic, although the house was by no means full. Asked if he thought the publicity could have been better, Abene said, "I thought our performance here was relatively well publicized. We had a very successful press conference where the music editors from the island's major publications showed up. There were radio interviews as well as articles in most of the papers, not to mention a TV show taping. It's not always that good in the States."
Other aspects of the Taiwan scene also struck Abene as being positive. "One thing you have to keep in mind is that jazz is appreciated by a very selective audience," he said. "People talk about how sophisticated New York audiences are, but that isn't always true. I've played in New York when people didn't understand what I was trying to do. The quality of an audience matters more than its quantity. I would rather have half a house that's with me than a full house that's indifferent. And the audience today was definitely with us. What we were playing wasn't a traditional type of jazz—it was past that point, past bebop. It had a lot of elements in it, including some strangeness—plus the fact that there was no rhythm section. Yet I found the audience very responsive."
The concert was followed with another change of pace—a question and answer session moderated by the locally well-known composer Peter Chang. A graduate of the Berkeley College of Music in Boston, Chang returned to Taiwan to write the scores for several successful motion pictures, including" A City of Sadness", the Hou Hsiao-hsien film that took top honors at this year's Venice Film Festival.
"Musicians and jazz lovers on Taiwan need to start a jazz society," Chang says. "The development of jazz on the island is mainly a question of organization and exposure. It's mainly the responsibility of the musicians and DJ's to see that jazz gets a wider exposure than in the past. I think the local DJ's are guilty to some degree of playing a very narrow and 'safe' range of music that they know will please their listeners. They aren't exposing them to more diverse music, such as jazz. "
One DJ who does contribute his tithe to the development of jazz on Taiwan is Bill Thissen at ICRT (International Community Radio, Taipei), Taiwan's only all-English radio station. For the past two and a half years, Thissen has been producing and hosting the island's only jazz program, broadcast every Sunday evening. The program originally focused on mainstream jazz, but recently switched to more contemporary fusion-type jazz.
"I don't call my program a jazz program. I call it 'Flavors', because many people have an image of what jazz is and that image is often wrong. There has actually never been a definition for jazz. Louis Armstrong couldn't come up with a definition and neither could Duke Ellington. They would just say something like—'well just tap your foot, and you'll know it.' A lot of local listeners really enjoy what they hear on my show, but they don't know it's jazz. "
Does jazz have a bright future in Taiwan? "Jazz, like anything else nowadays, has to be marketed," Thissen says. "Records are a major part of music promotion, but unfortunately the record companies are not in the business of education. Taiwan record importers put the majority of their capital into more popular and easily marketed music forms. Actually, even in the U.S. jazz only accounts for three percent of the whole music market. Previously, I had to get all of the CD's for my show from Hong Kong or by asking co-workers to bring them for me from the States."
But things are looking up. GRP, a major jazz label, is planning to penetrate Taiwan's market, and other local distributors are carrying more jazz titles. Thissen adds that the jazz scene could be boosted further if a major local corporation would help support jazz on the island. "There are actually quite a number of fine foreign jazz musicians on the island, and if they had the financial backing they could go around to the universities and put on concerts," he says. "If university students are exposed to jazz, once they graduate they will be the ones putting out money for records and concert tickets. Not only would that help jazz on the island, but it would also improve the image of any corporate sponsor. "
The existence of foreign jazz musicians on Taiwan may come as a surprise to many people, but there are in fact a number of American, British, and Filipino musicians who call Taiwan home. Some are working in studios doing commercials, others are making records, and a few are playing in restaurants and clubs. One of the better-known of these clubs is the Farmhouse, which has a jazz jam session every Sunday afternoon. Besides the regular "house band," which appears weekly, anyone who feels like showing up with their instrument can play.
The primary musical offering is mainstream jazz —bebop, swing, and the like. The atmosphere is mellow and the quality of jazz, if not always consistent, is generally good. There is usually a mixed crowd of Chinese and expats. Any doubts that they come for anything but the jazz are quickly dispelled when most of the crowd disappears with the band at six o'clock.
Taiwan may still not be the music capital of Asia, but there are promising signs that jazz is on the upswing. The success of recent concerts will no doubt encourage more music promoters to be bolder about scheduling jazz acts. New Aspect is already in the process of arranging a jazz festival for next year, and Dave Brubeck is said to be already signed up. Record companies are also starting to shed their conservative cloaks by producing more jazz releases. But perhaps most importantly, Taiwan's youth have shown that once exposed to jazz, they really like it. The idea that Chinese ears aren't made for jazz is a definite flat note.