Beijing Nine Gate Jazz Festival to Kick off September 9!

Beijing's Nine Gates International Jazz Festival is back this fall for the city's most discerning jazz lovers.

Now in its sixth year, this year's concerts will take place at the Chaoyang Park Center Island Theater, National Library Concert Hall, Beijing Contemporary Music Academy and various bars around China's capital.

Andrea Hunt has more:

This September 9-18, festival goers will have their hearts and musical appetites sated with crooning voices and sultry jazz melodies. An eclectic group of talented local and international musicians will highlight the best of Big Band, Swing, Funk, Blues and more.

During the late 1980s, Nine Gates founder, then Beijing student Huang Yong, was given a tape of Miles Davis. One jazz cassette led him down a new path of musical collaboration, shows and small festivals that would create Beijing's jazz scene of today.

"It was pretty natural for me to start a jazz festival in Beijing. First of all, I'm a jazz bass player myself and many musicians I've played with also played jazz as well. In 2005, we not only played American classical jazz music, but we also wrote a substantial amount of jazz ourselves. We began to discuss how to create and play this incredible jazz music. Also, we started adding Asian or Chinese characteristics to it, which was very symbolic for the development of our music."

Jazz in China had a very different beginning than anywhere else. It stopped for many years after its early popularity in Old Shanghai during the 1930s and 40s. It wasn't until the late 1980s, beneath a new flourish of Western musical influence that jazz resurfaced after decades of hibernation.

Liang Heping helped China's jazz scene be reborn and is another organizer of the festival. His personal taste is more European and reflected in the line up of international bands.

"Many American musicians created very classic music, but in comparison to Europeans, their music is quite familiar and doesn't have as many new elements. Of course, a few are very good. But European musicians have a characteristic where they combine their own cultural background and create their own musical "language."

This year's musicians come from all over China and as far away as Austria, Israel, the USA, Spain, Norway, Japan, and Thailand. The international mesh is also part of Huang's larger initiative to bring music and culture together through his festival.

"There are two main goals. One is to invite great foreign jazz musicians to China, to get the Chinese audience and young musicians familiar with how others from around the world create music. That aim is about cultural exchange. The other, which is really the core aim, is to motivate Chinese young musicians to study music and improve themselves to create better music."

Jazz in Beijing isn't always easy to find. This fall, fans in Beijing will get a rare chance to relish in their love of jazz music for over a week and soak up the international sounds of this old and beloved genre.

For CRI, I'm Andrea Hunt.