When jazz musicians describe their songs for an upcoming performance as “challenging,” the alarm bells are likely to go off for casual listeners.
But there’s no need to worry with the Dan Perkins Quartet, which plays at Sappho on Tuesday. Bandmembers say their challenge will be to present music that is interesting for both the musicians and the audience.
For US saxophonist Dan Perkins, who was based in Southern California but is in the process of moving to Japan, this means choosing songs with a variety of grooves ranging from ballads to funk, and genres spanning modern jazz to pop.
“The thing I’m afraid of is the audience being bored. I don’t want them to be bored,” said Perkins in an interview after a rehearsal in Xindian.
While the 37-year-old is thoroughly immersed in the jazz world — he just completed his master’s degree in jazz performance at the California Institute of the Arts and has studied with accomplished musicians such as saxophonist Ernie Watts and drummer Joe La Barbera — he still tries to be mindful of the other half of the equation in music: the listener.
“Sometimes, players, we get caught up in our own world, and we don’t consider: if I was an audience member would I be enjoying this? I know jazz is a player’s music, but I also have to consider what my audience is thinking, and would they find this interesting,” he said.
The quartet will be playing songs with more intricate arrangements as opposed to the typical run of standards conducive to freeform jamming. Selections include McCoy Tyner’s My Love, Effendi, Medeski, Martin and Wood’s Wiggly’s Way and the Beatles’ Across the Universe.
In a nod to local audiences, the quartet also plans to perform a few well-known numbers, The Moon Represents My Heart (月亮代表我的心) and I Only Care About You (我只在你) — songs made famous by the late, revered singer Teresa Deng (鄧麗君).
The Mando-pop tunes were chosen by Perkins’ friend and college classmate, Chris Stiles, a trombonist and pianist who has been based in Taipei for five years. Stiles and the drummer from his own group, the Chris Stiles Trio, are serving as Perkins’ backing band.
Stiles, an Arizona native who also plays piano for Brown Sugar’s house band, says he often includes songs Taiwanese know in his shows. Luring audiences in with a familiar melody, he says, can go a long way in educating audiences new to jazz.
“Something just as simple as explaining that we’re going to play [a Chinese song], we’re going to play the melody — something as simple as that can help turn a light on,” he said.
Naturally, the quartet’s show on Tuesday won’t be a note-for-note rehash of Teresa Deng’s best. Their version of The Moon Represents My Heart obliges the original melody but has a “floating” feeling with “lots of cymbals,” said Stiles.
“It feels more freeing,” he said. “We’re not bound by regular rules or structure. But ... adding those jazz harmonies, to me, makes it sound more sentimental.”
Joining Perkins and Stiles will be Taipei-based drummer Ed Schaefer and bassist Martijn van Buel.
Dan Perkins Quartet plays Sappho de Base, B1, 1, Ln 102, Anhe Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市安和路一段102巷1號B1) on Tuesday at 10pm. Call (02) 2700-05411 or visit www.sappho102.biz for more information. Cover charge is NT$200.
The depressing numbers continue to pile up, like casualty lists after a lost battle. This week, after the government announced the 19th straight month of population decline, the Ministry of the Interior said that Taiwan is expected to lose 6.67 million workers in two waves of retirement over the next 15 years. According to the Ministry of Labor (MOL), Taiwan has a workforce of 11.6 million (as of July). The over-15 population was 20.244 million last year. EARLY RETIREMENT Early retirement is going to make these waves a tsunami. According to the Directorate General of Budget Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), the
Many will be surprised to discover that the electoral voting numbers in recent elections do not entirely line up with what the actual voting results show. Swing voters decide elections, but in recent elections, the results offer a different and surprisingly consistent message. And there is one overarching theme: a very democratic preference for balance. SOME CAVEATS Putting a number on the number of swing voters is surprisingly slippery. Because swing voters favor different parties depending on the type of election, it is hard to separate die-hard voters leaning towards one party or the other. Complicating matters is that some voters are
Five years ago, on the verge of the first COVID lockdown, I wrote an article asking what seemed to be an extremely niche question: why do some people invert their controls when playing 3D games? A majority of players push down on the controller to make their onscreen character look down, and up to make them look up. But there is a sizable minority who do the opposite, controlling their avatars like a pilot controls a plane, pulling back to go up. For most modern games, this requires going into the settings and reconfiguring the default controls. Why do they
Take one very large shark, a boat (we’re gonna need a bigger one of those) and a movie that ran way over budget and you’ve got all the ingredients of a career-making film for one of Hollywood’s most successful directors. Now fans of Jaws — Steven Spielberg’s terrifying thriller about a man-eating shark — can re-live the movie as it celebrates its 50th anniversary in an exhibition at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles. “The film certainly cost me a pound of flesh, but gave me a ton of career,” Spielberg told reporters as he toured exhibits of props and memorabilia