On the evening of May 9, the 2024 Taihu Jazz Festival "Jazz China" charity event entered the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), where guitarist Gu Zhongshan and bassist Huang Yong played and chatted, launching a dialogue between music and fine arts in this fantastic jazz night.

The core of jazz is improvisation, says Mr. Gu. Music and fine art are both artistic creations, full of fickle inspiration and a thousand personalities. “All the Blues", "Autumn Leaves", "All of You" and other iconic jazz pieces were played one after another, showcasing different styles.

Gu Zhongshan and Huang Yong have known each other for more than 20 years, and they have a perfect understanding of each other, they try to have dialogues in improvisation again and again. To Gu Zhongshan, improvisation is like freedom within a framework. Successful improvisation cannot be separated from the accumulation of previous work day after day and requires the flexible use of various musical languages and techniques. Huang Yong encourages everyone to go to the live jazz show more often, believing that the album records the musicians' state of mind on that day and at that moment, but in fact that moment has already faded away with their thinking and art never stops changing.

As the performance progressed, the boundaries between music and art became more and more blurred. Three students took out their paintings and asked Gu Zhongshan and Huang Yong to look at the pictures and play a show about them: oil paintings depicting trees, duckweed and reflections became light and beautiful on their strings, while thick and thin Chinese paintings echoed far away.

It is the fourth stop of the "Jazz China" charity program of the 2024 Taihu Jazz Festival. As the first planned section of this year's festival, "Jazz China" has already visited Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, and next be the Peking University, Financial Street, and the Artistic Documentation Center of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, to warm up the audience for the official opening of the festival on May 22nd. Jazz China will continue to warm up for the official opening of the festival on May 22nd.

Translator: BAI Jing

Reviewer: SHEN Ruixuan