Nanjing International Jazz Music and World Music Festival has been successfully held for 9 times since 2002. 54 musicians of 10 bands from Germany, Holland, Belgium, Canada, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and China are invited this year. They will hold concerts at Nanjing Culture & Art Center, Southeast University, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Jiangsu Drama School and on public squares of counties and districts.

Many famous musicians and jazz, percussion music bands come to the festival. They will also make interactive performances with local musicians. A well-known guitar player will come to stage “Classical & Jazz” with Yang Yulun, the world famous flute performer and distinguished professor of Nanjing University of the Arts and Nanjing Normal University on the evening of October 15. Local band “Jinling Dragon” will invite a African-origin French percussion performer to make performances at Nanjing University and Jiangsu Drama School.

Francis Wong, composer, leader, saxophone
Tatsu Aoki, acoustic bass, shamisen (Japanese 3 string lute)
Elliot Humberto Kavee, drums
Jon Jang, piano

With special guests

Lawson Fusao Inada, poet, vocals
Genny Lim, poet, vocals
John Carlos Perea, electric bass
Hafez Modirzadeh, saxophone

This program of Francis Wong compositions will be feature works for quartet and sextet featuring Wong with longtime musical co-conspirators Aoki, Jang, Kavee, Modirzadeh and Perea as well as interdisciplinary collaborations with Lim and Inada.

”I choose for my work to build community and to seek out how I, as an artist can meet the challenges that our community faces. In the Asian American community, the biggest challenge is continuity of culture and the impact of assimilation.

“Compositions are vehicles for memory – improvisation keeps these memories alive and vital.”

more info click http://www.asianimprov.org/persistenceofvision.htm

When: May 17, 2008
Time: 1-2:30pm
Cost: FREE
Where: Yerba Buena Gardens: Esplanade – San Francisco

Composer/pianist Jon Jang’s musical language re-contextualizes Chinese folk songs within a contemporary music framework, a metaphor for the changing face of Chinese America. Unbound Chinatown pays homage to Alice Fong Yu, the first Chinese American teacher hired by the San Francisco School District. With his stellar ensemble, including saxophonist Francis Wong and trombonist/music director Wayne Wallace, and guest vocalist Min Xiao Fen, Jang paints musical portraits of Yu’s life as a community and political leader during the 1930s.