Paul Zetter – If Anyone Was under Any Doubt that…

Our music reviewer attended the Jazz Edit concert last week and was impressed by the display of youthful jazz talents.

Whatever people might say about Vietnamese education there seems to be one place where they’ve been getting it consistently right – the Jazz Department at the National Academy of Music in Hanoi. For years they’ve been following a proven formula. The Department has been porous – they’ve welcomed visiting jazz musicians and international teachers in numerous exchange visits and workshops. They have developed a youthful and expert faculty of teachers with whom students can be partners. But above all they have persisted day by day, year by year with a determined vision that jazz has an important role to play in the musical landscape of Vietnam not just for how it sounds but for the values of creativity, mutual respect and co-operation jazz espouses. All this was borne out last week in the Jazz Edit concert at L’Espace that featured both current and recent students and some of the faculty of the Jazz Department. It was a wake up call for anyone harbouring any doubt that jazz has an audience here or that Vietnam can produce high quality young jazz musicians.

First up was a quartet comprising students Luong Duy on bass, Hai Phong, piano, Minh Truong on violin and Hoang Phong, drums, whose chosen repertoire was very much in the jazz funk vein of Marcus Miller and Bob James et al. With pinpoint precision in the high speed unison lines of the head arrangements, Truong, violin, provided a deep soulfulness that was underpinned by the technical accuracy of Duy’s five string bass and the exuberance of percussionist, Hoang Phong. The band were well balanced and Hai Phong on keyboard impressed with his measured solos, often starting with simple repetitive phrases building up to expansive righthand lines that would be the envy of many a keyboardist. All the band proved they were capable soloists and their individual and collective ability to build to a crescendo without playing all their musical cards at once went down well with the similarly aged audience. I would like to have seen them challenge themselves with more diverse and harmonically unpredictable repertoire but considering this was a showcase evening I can see why they made the choices they did.

I was first impressed with guitarist Xuan Tung on my previous review of the Jump For Jazz concert led by Bao Long and Tung led the next combo of Hai Bang on bass, Le Bang, piano and Hung Cuong on drums. Tung has got something special but difficult to define – an alchemy of presence, technique and tone that make his playing exciting and interesting. With their first song, Ru Em, an original based on a Vietnamese folk melody, by tutor Le Bang, the group presented what I think might have been a roadmap for the future of Vietnamese jazz. Starting with a beguiling asymmetrical single note piano introduction by Le Bang that somehow built in beauty and harmonic complexity whilst keeping its structural simplicity, the band then joined with an understated theme that had layers within layers of interest and texture. Suddenly the game was raised even further as Xuan Tung then built an extended solo of imaginative dynamics.

With such a rich folk music culture to draw from, combining this with contemporary jazz sounds may be the only way Vietnamese jazz musicians move from copyists to innovators. The initial blueprints have been set out by musicians like Quyen Van Minh and his son Dac but they need building on and to be constantly refined to reflect where we are now.

Navigating all this with a masterly touch for light and shade was percussionist Hung Cuong. I was impressed with Cuong the first time I heard him – like Xuan Tung, he has a stage presence coupled with an ability to create excitement from the intensity and beauty of his touch not the volume or technique of his beats. Although the wearing on stage of sunglasses by both Cuong and Xuan Tung hints at an additional awareness of image and mystique, there’s no ignoring their musical talents. Pianist, Huu Vuong on the other hand had a more modest stage presence but also made beautiful sounds. Navigating skillfully through the textural complexities of Pat Metheny’s Have you Heard? he is following in the footsteps of established pianists like Tien Manh but adding some of his own spice.

When fellow sunglasses wearers Duy Manh on alto and Manh Hung alto/soprano joined in their respective features both in the continuing jazz funk style, suddenly the commercial potential of Vietnamese jazz came to the fore. Both image-conscious young men emblazoned on the audience the full-on, seat of your pants David Sanborn/Kenny G sax style. It’s always tough when you only have one chance to impress in a feature concert but what I would have given to hear both these young men play something acoustic, less saccharine, less ephemeral. They’re both oozing over with talent but their song choice just seemed to pander to the commercial this time – but maybe that was the plan.

So an exciting night of youthful jazz talent and energy came to the end and all credit to the Jazz Department faculty organizers and L’Espace for letting us experience it all. Maybe this could be an annual event..? The evening wasn’t without its flaws though. For me the repertoire could have been a bit more varied across the whole evening and some acoustic pieces or more originals would have allowed us to appreciate a fuller picture of the talents on show without the veil of electronics.

But on the way home I couldn’t help reflecting on how far Vietnamese jazz has come in the years I’ve been following it. For jazz to survive in any culture it has to tap into the human need to continually reinvent itself and innovate upon the bedrock of tradition. This latest batch of students and teachers seem poised to do this. When they eventually shift from emulating and replicating the sounds of their musical gods, be they Metheny, Miller or Culbertson, to finding their original voice that draws on their unique experience of living here, the sunglasses will come off and a lasting connection with the audience will be made. That’s when the edit will sing.

Photographs courtesy of L’Espace and the Jazz Department.