Harmonizing cultures: The Euro-Pinoy jazz experience

MANILA, Philippines - It’s the blue-and-green of it all. Jazz greats like Miles Davis and John Coltrane encountered a more adoring audience in Europe, so did Jaco Pastorius and John McLaughlin. Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon operated as jazz expats, exporting their round-about-midnight grooves and pork-pie-hat melodies and finding a special place in European cultural life. The voice of Ella and Louis wafted from the smoky clubs and café, giving customers a jazzy epiphany or two. Why do Europeans love this genuinely American artform?

“We Europeans love the spirit of improvisation that jazz allows — it’s very human,” Julian Vassallo, Political Counselor of the European Union Delegation to the Philippines. Vassallo, who hails from Malta, loves both the free, improvisational type of jazz as well as the more meticulously arranged New Orleans variant. His sister used to organize the jazz festivals in his home country. “One of the things I love about jazz is that if you’re lucky enough to be in the first row (of a concert), you’d actually see the communication between the artists, how they’re making it up as they go along. The atmosphere also… they see how the audience is reacting, and they’d send it off with one musician who’s going to take the music one way or another. Europeans appreciate the freedom element that the genre provides.”

Filipinos share that love for jazz shown by Europeans.

“The Philippines always surprises me,” Vassallo says with a smile. “The more you dig into this country, the more you’d realize how much is going on. Perhaps it is less easy to find it. It’s not always obvious. I’ve been here for two-and-a-half years, and I’m still discovering a lot. There are these beautiful little pockets, such as Intramuros, which can be developed and are still developing into scenes of artistic performances.”

Jazz has found a way of surviving in our own part of the world. The jazz bars maybe a bit obscured by the noisier dance clubs, but the jazz musos — from Tots Tolentino and Noli Aurillo to the young masters-in-the-making — keep that idiosyncratic animal called Pinoy Jazz alive and well.

So, if you assembled some of the most respected jazz musicians in Europe — France, Germany, Italy and Spain — and put them in a hall with one of the titans of Pinoy jazz, what would happen?

Two nights of East-meets-West jazz magic, we predict, as five musicians   engage in a cross-cultural collaboration for the very first time at the “Euro-Pinoy Jazz Concerts,” an aural summit between European and Filipino jazz musicians on Feb. 21, Friday at 8 p.m., at Arts in the City in Bonifacio Global City and on Feb. 22, Saturday at 8 p.m., at the historic Maestranza Plaza in Intramuros.

Presented by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) Philippines together with the European Union Delegation to the Philippines, the six-day event will commence with a four-day workshop from Feb. 17 to 20, where the distinguished musicians will harmonize their unique brand of artistry to compose original jazz repertoire. Each artist will be bringing “his own creative expressions of jazz music to the table, with the aim of creating a fresh and distinctive identity, and fostering cultural cooperation.” 

Guitarist Nguyên Lê (France) will lend his fusion of Vietnamese and Western styles, bringing concepts from traditional music to the electrical instrument and making fascinating, adventurous, yet accessible ambient jazz music. Percussionist Tino di Geraldo (Spain), who has played with flamenco legend Paco De Lucia, will show how he incorporates classical and jazz elements into flamenco music. Singer Michael Schiefel (Germany) — who has dazzled his fans in Berlin and abroad with an array of solo and band projects — will demonstrate his experimental vocal approach. Double bass player Furio di Castri (Italy) — one of the leading bass players on Italy’s jazz and improvised music scene since the late ’70s — will showcase his improvisational low-end approach. Saxophonist Tots Tolentino (Philippines) will leave jazz aficionados crestfallen with lyrical sax runs and his own take on creating “sheets of music.”

Highly respected for their innovative approaches to their craft, these musicians have also come together to foster “a greater appreciation of jazz music among Filipino audiences, and transcend linguistic and cultural barriers between EU nations and the Philippines through the language of music.”

The key thing here is that the five artists, who have never played as a unit before, will get together in one room and create jazz tunes together. Vassallo says they have a couple of days to “get to know each other, to improvise, and to come up with something really special.”

Petra Raymond, Goethe-Institut director, explains, “Music is the language that everybody understands and everyone can contribute. Music doesn’t know any borders. It’s not just bringing European music on-stage; it is creating and providing a platform for exchange.” Something is bound to blossom among these five nations, she adds. “It will not end in the last concert; it’s a starting point. The audience will witness the result. It will open up the floor for music. We (at EUNIC) are simply the facilitators, transporting the idea of cultural exchange between Europe and the Philippines.”

How did this project come about?

Vassallo says, “Our friends at Goethe-Institut did something similar in countries Pakistan and Bosnia. Quite interesting is that, several years ago in Pakistan, the project created such a bond that the two musicians are still playing together.” They have become a couple, creating improvisatory magic in jazz, love and life.

“If the concerts and workshops in the Philippines become successful, then we would make it an annual thing,” concludes Vassallo. “The cultural ties, the people-to-people ties… these are the ties that bind. Events such as this sometimes create those relationships that last, upon which new endeavors, new enterprises are built.”

Two evenings of Euro-Pinoy jazz; a lifetime of harmonic cooperation.

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The “Euro-Pinoy Jazz Concerts” is the first project of EUNIC Philippines, composed of Alliance Française de Manille, Goethe-Institut Philippinen, Instituto Cervantes, the Philippine Italian Association, together with the European Union Delegation to the Philippines, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the Intramuros Administration and Arts in the City.

The event is also supported by the French Embassy to the Philippines, the Italian Embassy to the Philippines, and the Spanish Embassy to the Philippines, and is sponsored by Qatar Airways, Bayleaf Hotel, and Radio Republic.

Admission to the “Euro-Pinoy Jazz Concerts” is free on a first-come, first-serve basis, For inquiries, call Sabrina Durand, Alliance Française cultural coordinator at 895-7585, or visit the Euro-Pinoy Jazz Concerts Facebook page.