Vocalist and composer
Annie Chen, born in Beijing and based in New York, is both musically and
geographically international. As a child she studied classical piano but also
fell in love with jazz. As an adult she became interested in traditional music
from around the world. All of those influences emulsify into a unique style of
Chen's own on her second album, Secret Treetop, released November 2, 2018
through Shanghai Audio&Video Ltd. Co.
"When
you are standing at the top of the tree, you can see a much wider world,"
says Chen in explaining Secret Treetop's title. "It's just like that when
you're making music: You need to see farther and open your mind and heart.
Everything must be open."
The album
adds additional layers of global music influence by way of Chen's octet, which
features Polish guitarist Rafal Sarnecki, Japanese violinist Tomoko Omura and
Canadian trumpeter David Smith alongside American jazz musicians Glenn Zaleski
(piano), Alex LoRe (alto saxophone/flute), Mat Muntz (bass) and Jerad Lippi
(drums).
Secret
Treetop is not the beginning of Chen's journey into the wider world she
mentions. Her debut recording, 2014's Pisces the Dreamer, was painted with a
similar palette of world music influences. The sophomore release refreshes that
palette with new sounds, many of them brought to Chen by new collaborators.
"I like
to listen to a lot of different countries' traditional music," Chen says.
"I have a lot of Turkish friends, and I studied with a Turkish percussionist.
My guitarist [Sarnecki], who is also an arranger, is from Poland, and I was
influenced a lot by the Eastern European traditional music he played for me:
Polish, Croatian, Bulgarian, Czech."
Chen was also charmed by the Balkan a cappella choirs she encountered at
Brooklyn's Zlatne Uste Golden Festival. They shaped her approach to the album's
title track, which otherwise wears its East Asian influence on its sleeve.
"I wanted to create the feeling of singing out in the open," she
explains. "I'm standing on top of the tree, and I sing to the
mountain."
The Turkish
influence is most apparent in the whirling dervish violin and mixed-meter
polyrhythms of the album-opening "Ozledim Seni" ("Miss
You"). The lyrical content of the song is also evocative. "I created
a scene of going back a thousand years ago to the Ottoman Empire," Chen
says. "I heard so many stories from my friends about Turkish history. It's
also about my Turkish friends coming to visit me, and how much I would miss
them after I took them back to the airport."
Chen's
interest in traditional music includes repertoire from her childhood, which she
explores in a pair of folk songs: "Ao Bao Xiang Hui" from Mongolia,
and "Gan Lan Shu" from Taiwan. Both, she says, are songs that
everyone who surrounded her in China would have known-especially "Ao Bao
Xiang Hui," a love song that's hundreds of years old. "I'm from the
north of China," she says. "We encounter Mongolian cultural aspects a
lot. Being from Beijing, I have lots of thoughts about this music." Of
course, the Taiwanese "Gan Lan Shu" suggests that Chen is acquainted
with the culture of southern China as well. It has a great deal of personal
resonance both for Chen and for her New York audiences. "The lyric is
talking about people leaving the country and traveling far away to chase their
dreams; I find that very touching," she says. "When I perform, all
the Chinese people in New York who hear it, they tear up."
Japan bears
a subtler influence; it comes not so much from the island nation's music as
from its cultural artifacts. "Majo Kiki in 12 Days" was inspired by
the title character of the Japanese anime film Kiki's Delivery Service, who
impressed Chen with a bravery and independence that's opposite to most
portrayals of Asian women. "Mr. Wind-Up Bird, Strange Yearning" is a
response to Haruki Murakami's famous novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Chen's
tune is wordless, intended not to reflect the novel itself, but how she felt
after reading it.
World
literature also forms the basis for "Leaving Sonnet," in this case
the titular poetic form which originated in Italy. "They have a very
strict rhyme," Chen notes. "I thought, maybe I could use this concept
in my music. Not in the lyrics, but I wrote very strict phrasing structures,
and the polyrhythms are very strict as well. It caused some problems for the
musicians-it was really hard!" she laughs.
Chen hopes
that her many influences have blended insolubly on two songs inspired by her
relationship with her boyfriend, guitarist Marius Duboule. "Orange Tears
Lullaby" was written to soothe him as he underwent knee problems; the
antibiotics turned his tears orange. The spare "My Ocean is Blue in
White" draws on more symbolic colors to illustrate Chen's thoughts about
love: "At weddings, everything is white because white is pure. But love is not pure-sometimes you're suffering
or sad. There's always some blue color in the white."
A
digital-only bonus track, Chen's rendition of Nirvana's "All
Apologies" presents yet another musical world into which she was plugged.
"Nirvana is one of my favorite rock bands, and they influenced me when I
was a teenager a lot," she explains. As always, however, Chen reframes the
tunes on her own terms, with a radical rearrangement by herself and Sarnecki
that culminates in fierce counterpoint between Smith and LoRe.
Annie Chen
was born in Beijing, China. She was only four years old when she began studying
classical piano at Central Conservatory of Music-and at that tender age was
already practicing five to six hours a day. "The education is so
strict," Chen says. "In China education is focused on being the best
at all costs: 'You need to win. You need to win.' So every year I had to go to
a lot of piano competitions."
As she
labored at Mozart and Beethoven her father, a business translator and jazz
lover, would bring her jazz CDs from his business trips to the United States.
When she heard Sarah Vaughan, the teenaged Chen decided that her real desire
was to be a jazz singer.
With jazz
education hard to come by in China, Chen continued with her classical studies,
earning a bachelor's degree from the Central Conservatory of Music. She then
began working as a decidedly non-classical singer: She was lead vocalist in the
bands Blues Driver, Big John and Black Hot Pisces, as well as the leader of the
Soul Decree Funk Big Band, the only funk large ensemble in China.
She worked
at venues such as Blue Note Beijing, East Shore Jazz Club, DDC, JiangHu,
Guangzhou Xinghai Concert Hall and JZ Club Shanghai and Hangzhou, where she led
her quintet over a three-month residency. She performed at major festivals
across the country-including the Solana Summertime Festival, Chaoyang Music
Festival, Beijing Nine-Gates Jazz Festival, CD Jazz Week, and the Shanghai
International Jazz Festival.
In 2010,
Chen came to New York City on an eight-month student visa, studying privately
at Manhattan School of Music with vocalist Nancy Marano and doing occasional
vocal gigs with pianists. At the end of the year, she returned to China, where
she continued performing. In 2012, however, she returned to New York to pursue
a master's degree at Queens College. She took vocal lessons with Charenee Wade,
piano with David Berkman, arrangement and composition with Michael Philip
Mossman, and improvisation with Antonio Hart.
In 2014, she
recorded her first album, Pisces the Dreamer, with a sextet comprising some of
her Queens College classmates. The album combined the influences of jazz,
gospel-drenched soul, pop-rock and bossa nova, as well as European classical,
Chinese and Middle Eastern music in seven original compositions by Chen and two
standards.
The
following year, Chen formed her octet, and began performing with them around
New York City. She also began what would ultimately be a three-year process of
composing for them, the results of which have now come together with Secret
Treetops. "I don't know what kinds of things I can write in the future,
but for now I'm very proud of these compositions," she says. "This is
my milestone so far.
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