ES-002
Recording
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ES-001
Bridge Builders
Ted Lo
Hong Kong’s “Godfather of Jazz” and the first Chinese graduate of Berklee College of Music (1975) on a life lived between worlds.
Also on YouTube
He crossed an ocean to learn the language of jazz, then spent a lifetime teaching Hong Kong to speak it.
Liner notes · ES-001
Liner notes
About this session
Side A: The Jam
Every episode opens the only way this story can honestly be told: with a live duo jam. Before anyone explains the music, two players sit down and make some. Whatever happens in the room becomes the first question.
Side B: The Conversation
Before there was a scene, there were a few people willing to cross an ocean for a sound. Ted Lo was one of them. In 1975 he became the first Chinese graduate of Berklee College of Music, and in the decades since, Hong Kong has come to call him its Godfather of Jazz.
In the first episode of Eastern Standards, he talks about leaving home to learn a language that wasn’t his yet, the players who taught him how to listen, and what it meant to carry that vocabulary back east, where it had to be translated, argued with, and finally made local.
These notes are a starting point, not the final word. Corrections, memories, and photographs from anyone who played alongside Ted are always welcome.
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