"If you think being a musician in Hong Kong is difficult, then maybe you should look at music more seriously," said Kenneth Li – the curator, artistic director, composer, and violinist of the concert "Symphonic Jazz Odyssey" set for February 22.
It is perhaps this tenacity that has empowered him to achieve "firsts." Li founded Korvi Quartet, which he calls Hong Kong's first professional jazz string quartet and one of fewer than five of its kind worldwide. After the concert, Li plans to establish the city's first ever jazz symphony orchestra, also a global rarity.
Symphonic jazz is the fusion of jazz and orchestral music – a scarcely performed genre as few around the world are versed in both forms. In the upcoming show, a jazz band will join a symphonic orchestra to forge a lush, bold constellation of sound.
A master of both categories, Li however rejects that symphonic jazz is a case of addition: "It's not that the jazz band is the main character, and the orchestra is just accompanying it."
Rather than arithmetic, Li sees symphonic jazz as more reflective of a society, where people form something new by coming together. "It sounds like speaking different languages and switching between them very quickly – and sometimes creating a new language," he said. "Which is kind of similar to how we speak in Hong Kong. We use different languages, and no one is in a lower position."
Inclusivity is a crucial concept in music-making for Li, who has shadowed jazz masters from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Portugal and Poland; studied genres spanning from Latin and African to Indian music; and held performances around the globe. "These elements all became the nutrients for my compositions," he said, hinting at the various musical cultures to be heard in his concert.
A specialist in an unconventional strain of jazz, Li faces a relatively "tough crowd" in Hong Kong – but he has never considered it a reason to give up. "If you can't find the ingredients for making music in Hong Kong," he said, referring to factors like performance venues and local listenership, "you need to try [harder] to get them. And you have to accept that if you do it here, it's harder, but that's what you want and you shouldn't blame [the conditions]."
If the soil for growing your passion is not fertile enough, till it – that is Li's philosophy. A self-identified "true product of Hong Kong," he has chosen the city as his land, as well as the muse of the bulk of his music.
"Once I wrote about a dog's grave at the back of the old Aberdeen police station," he said about Bobbylon Suite, one of his compositions. His other song "Unrequited" was inspired by the folklore of a lonesome maiden whose fate is tied to a century-old tree in Yim Tin Tsai.
"Storytelling," Li said, is the foremost quality of his music. In "Symphonic Jazz Odyssey," the audience will travel through a patchwork of stories: from the life of jazz master Duke Ellington to the myths of Sagittarius – and more.
