Jazz Ensemble Touring China

La Monica Everett-Haynes
Aug. 16, 2013

China is getting a look at Wildcat talent. 

In coordination with the Dalian Yilong Performance Company, a private performance management group that organizes tours with foreign organizations and institutions, the UA Studio Jazz Ensemble is touring the country on a special trip.

UA Studio Jazz Ensemble is, for the second time this decade, touring China through a collaboration with the Dalian Yilong Performance Company. The first tour was in 2010. (Photo courtesy of the UA School of Music) 

UA School of Music faculty members Jeff Haskell and Moisés Paiewonsky arranged the music for the trip. Award-winning American Idol finalist Crystal Stark and former Broadway performer Jack Neubeck, co-owner of The Planning Center in Tucson, are touring with the ensemble.

This year, the ensemble is performing 16 concerts throughout China – up from nine in 2010 – in some of the largest venues in the country, with as many as 3,000 seats. The group is visiting Shanghai, Ma'anshan, Hefei, Zhangjiagang, Shenzhen and elsewhere, returning to Tucson Aug. 22.

"It is so obvious to me what each trip means to our future graduates: an opportunity to represent the UA and United States abroad, the chance to perform at a very high musical level, and the chance to mingle with people whose lives are very different from ours in their cities and countries," said Edward Reid, assistant director of the UA School of Music. 

"During each trip there are wonderful stories that come back to our dinners together of experiences the students have had in a store, down the street or at a historic site with the residents of the country we are visiting," Reid said, adding that it is the 10th international trip with UA students he has taken since 2005.

"Textbooks and PowerPoint presentations in a classroom cannot duplicate these real-life encounters and experiences. I know that this has immediate and long-term meaning for our students by simply looking at their faces as they relate their experiences." 

Representing a mix of jazz and standard songs, including those in Chinese languages, the ensemble is performing numbers like "At Last," "My Funny Valentine," "You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine," "Ain’t No Mountain High Enough" and the popular "Chrysanthemum Flower Song," sung in Mandarin.

"It's amazing that you can manage huge cultural differences in this way," said Andrew Comrie, UA senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, applauding the ensemble. "People communicate in a special way through music."

Trumpet player Skye van Duuren said he has gained valuable professional and social benefits from the trip already.

"Every time I have traveled outside the U.S. and come back, what I bring home with me is a refreshed sense of awareness of the world around me and that the routine in which I live my daily life in is far from what the world actually is," said van Duuren, who studies performance with an emphasis in composition.

"I'm very grateful to professors Moisés Paiewonsky, Jeff Haskell and Edward Reid for making this whole journey possible, and to all the skilled performers around me who have provided an atmosphere in which I've grown a great deal professionally," van Duuren said. "It is my belief that this ensemble is one of the best that Tucson has to offer and I am proud to be a part of it.

Another ensemble member, Dylan Carpenter, said he has gained personal and professional benefits in the time the UA group has been touring.

"I've been able to experience a taste of what it's like for touring musicians to play a show day after day, and the difficulty of keeping the performance just as fresh and exciting as very first time we ever played the charts," said Carpenter, a trombone performance junior who plays the tenor trombone.

"Playing a long, technically demanding show, practicing during down time, and processing musical concepts while off the horn, have all aided in rapidly improving my playing ability," Carpenter said. 

"In addition to that, I've been able to play with some of the best players in Tucson, and in one of the best ensembles in Arizona," he added. "I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity to be on this trip and to experience and learn so much."

In 2010, the UA Studio Jazz Ensemble also performed the popular "Chrysanthemum Flower Song" (video below).

 

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