Jazz-E Festival
The Jazz-E Festival in Beijing, China presents a rich and eclectic variety of artists offering a wide spectrum of all types of Electro Jazz.
The Jazz-E Festival is an international achievement from a French company, Eyesight Media, an initiative brought by its founders and managers and their loving passion for jazz and electronic music, Philippe Traht and Michel Lombardo. “Jazz is a very popular musical genre in China but its evolution towards electro-jazz is still very shy” says Michel Lombardo. “Our programming is a barometer of current electro-jazz trends in order to bring these new trends to the Beijing audience but also to enable our guests on stage to get to know a brand new, curious and totally open public: there will definitely be sparks!”. The festival takes place in the Forbidden City Concert Hall of Beijing.
“Since 1989, when new reforms were implemented allowing the mobility of the population, the new social class of “young professionals” among which the Chinese jazz audience can be found, has left the countryside to end up in large and sometimes new cities, far away from its traditional circle: family, work and friends”, explains Philippe Traht. “The loss of their social points of reference had to be compensated by virtual communities brought by new technologies, through the Internet or the cell phone. White collars not only use technology as a means of communication but also as a social tie: electro-jazz perfectly fits this community. As poetry, which, let us not forget, is a major art in China, electro-jazz is a music with a strong emotional sensitivity which can have a huge effect on the Chinese public. Even though Chinese people express things differently from us, emotion is there….”
In such a context, the “Master classes” with Laurent de Wilde organized in the frame of the festival for the students of the Beijing Music School stand to reason. The spontaneity of exchanges and the impossible formatting of electro-jazz music offer rich moments and build bridges between musicians and students.