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Alan Chan
Working musicians in some large ensembles can be forgiven for zoning out from time to time between their assigned parts, as long as they come through on cue. But when you’re performing the challenging big band music of Alan Chan, there's a good chance you’ll mess up if you’re not constantly on alert. “I like there to be surprises in my pieces, places where the music doesn’t go where or how you’d expect,” says the leader.
Shrimp Tale, the captivating debut album by the Alan Chan Jazz Orchestra—one of the brightest of recent additions to the Los Angeles jazz scene—is full of unexpected turns and instrumental combinations. On the title track, the composer briefly introduces a groove-based 5/4 passage, then a salsa section, before juxtaposing one over the other. There melody also quirkily shifts keys.
On “Rancho Calaveras,” inspired by time spent with a friend in her vegetable and fruit garden, the musicians are directed to make animal noises with their instruments—that’s right, cows and pigs and geese. “Having serious musicians do that sort of thing has a cool performance art aspect,” Chan says, grinning. “It makes the concert experience more fun.”
Though he’s a classically trained pianist, Chan restricts himself to conducting the band in performance—except when he plays “very silly things,” where called for, on toy instruments such as glockenspiel and animal noisemakers.
None of which is to suggest that Chan, a native of Hong Kong, doesn’t take his music very seriously. Most of his big band compositions reflect the modern world in affecting ways and, without explicitly incorporating ethnic forms, capture important aspects of the Asian-American experience.
“Tsu Zu Ku,” which translates as “to be continued” (a phrase he remembers appearing at the end of Japanese TV animations he watched as a boy), was written as an expression of hope for the victims of the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan. The early section of the song, featuring soprano saxophone and flute, is brisk and bright and flowing; Chan says he had the properties of water in mind. Then, suddenly, the music slows to a trickle, the melody carried by a mournful piano and taken down even lower by trombone and bass—before rebounding in optimism.
The politically charged “Moving to a New Capital” addresses the manmade health hazards in Beijing, including air pollution and water shortages, that led China’s former prime minister Zhu Yong Ji to warn that moving to a new capital might be the only option for citizens if efforts to improve the environment weren’t quickly made.
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Alan Chan Jazz Orchestra: Shrimp Tale
by Dan Bilawsky
Light flourishes, grand pronouncements, fleeting and flitting figures, sudden shifts in mood, and wide emotional arcs are part and parcel of the music created by the Alan Chan Jazz Orchestra. Chan, a classically trained pianist who came up in Hong Kong, hopped all over the United States while honing his writing skills. He studied jazz arranging as an undergraduate at the University of Miami, acquired a master's degree in composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, did ...
read moreAlan Chan: Shrimp Tale
by Jack Bowers
Big bands these days are being taken in many directions, one of which is eastward. Alan Chan, born and raised in Hong Kong and educated in part in the U.S. (at the universities of Miami and Southern California), has deftly blended Asian tradition with American jazz on Shrimp Tale, the splendid debut recording by his three-year-old Los Angeles-based orchestra. Growing up in Hong Kong, Chan says, he was exposed mainly to classical and Chinese folk music, from which he drew ...
read more"Shrimp Tale," Debut CD By The Los Angeles-Based Alan Chan Jazz Orchestra, To Be Released July 15
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Terri Hinte Publicity
The Alan Chan Jazz Orchestra has emerged, since its formation in 2011, as one of the brightest lights on the Los Angeles jazz scene. Last year, Chan gathered a group of topnotch studio and jazz players—19 pieces in all, plus guest trumpeter Wayne Bergeron—and produced a two-day session. First to be released, in the fall of 2013, was the EP Rancho Calaveras. Next month, on July 15, the orchestra’s debut CD Shrimp Tale is due for release on Chan’s imprint, ...
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“Chan has given Los Angeles a jazz big band with an utterly unique tonal personality.” — Kirk Silsbee (DownBeat Magazine, February, 2014)
“Alan is bringing a set of sounds that haven’t been heard before in an L.A. big band.” — Rick Baptist (DownBeat Magazine, February, 2014)
"Every track here is a beautiful, soaring expression." — Marc Myers / JazzWax
Primary Instrument
Composer / conductor
Location
Los Angeles
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Music
Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson