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ZY the Way — Then and Now
(Bandcamp Jazzy Couscous no#, 2024, DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-01-05

Then and Now Cover art

To my knowledge, no other group in the world has built a career out of adapting ancient Chinese poetry to jazz. ZY the Way, based in Taipei, does exactly that, taking as source material and inspiration the 305 poems contained in The Book of Songs (詩經), a collection of poetry compiled around 500 BCE and traditionally attributed to Kong Qiu (Confucius). Even 2500 years ago these poems were considered classics — the name 詩經 literally means “classic poetry.” A number of the poems from the collection are set to music on Then and Now, sometimes as sung lyrics and sometimes recited. When sung, they’re performed by Australian-Chinese Caitlin Magee, who has a lovely pure voice and manages to make the Chinese language work within a jazz context. She doesn’t indulge in a lot of runs, but brings in just the right amount of jazz inflection and a tasty vibrato. The recitations are by Bruce Tsai, who has a resonant voice, and the poems are all short enough that those who don’t understand Chinese won’t find themselves in the dark for long. Some of the spoken parts are within the musical tracks and some are isolated into brief interlude tracks. The compositions are by Matt Fullen, an American pianist living in Taipei, and have a nice modern flair to them, with some nifty odd rhythms and occasional electronic touches. Bass and drums are by Derrick Lin and Steven Ma respectively, and J Geddes guests on woodwinds — there’s some especially nice bass clarinet on several tracks. In spite of the mostly-acoustic instrumentation, there’s not a hint of cliched cocktail jazz. Fullen’s writing is modern and sophisticated, with angular bass lines and unpredictable chords along with the occasional odd meter. All in all, Then and Now is a unique and enjoyable experience, an interesting twist on jazz brought to an international milieu.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): ZY the Way

More info
http://zytheway.bandcamp.com/album/then-and-now

 

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