[分享] 20120227 Their Jazz Rocks by orion

「海洋」

Their Jazz Rocks

by orion  February 27, 2012

http://blog.yam.com/wallace_orion/article/47738449

“This is insane.” I said to myself, after Yoga Lin and his friends concluded this jazz night with their rendition of Radiohead’s No Surprises.

In fact, there is never something called no surprise about Yoga’s music, except for one: his talent and his passion, which is without a single doubt. Tonight Yoga and his team made a clear statement about music, and once again won respect and love from a packed house of audience.

Contrary to our impression about jazz as a soft and lay-back swing of notes, the jazz music tonight was essentially as intense as rock music. The musicians (violinist Huang, pianist Tseng, drummer Lin, saxophonist Su, and Double bass/band leader Cheng) opened the night with Cantaloupe Island. Yoga started a series of classical jazz songs, including Singing in the Rain, As Time Goes By, and Yesterday’s News. Into all these songs he injected his unique view about love and life, and coated them with his signature vocal. And I have to say, did he really have a great, great vocal tonight! The final falsetto of As Time Goes By was as heartbreakingly beautiful as you could imagine, and Yesterday’s News was verging on the audience’s emotional breakdown. It was not until this song did I realize that Yoga was probably trying to transform these jazz ballads into something that merges pop rock and classical instruments. The audience had yet to recover from the extraordinarily emotional A Life Backwards (倒帶人生), which had been considered by many of Yoga’s fans as one of the personal gems in his repertoire. He basically sang this song to heaven.

I was struck to learn that Impressions for North Country was the violinist Huang’s own work. This very contemporary music nicely echoed their music taste and skills, with a melodic theme that brings along the music flow. After this Yoga performed two lighthearted works, Mind Trick by Jamie Cullum, and Mercy, Mercy Me by Marvin Gaye. He switched between the sorrowful and the delightful seamlessly, and Mind Trick was so enjoyable that made you want to dance on your toes. Yoga’s preference for British pop brought Adele up on stage. Melt My Heart to Stone was simply incredible.

Halfway into this jazz concert, I was already paying a lot of respect not only to Yoga, but also to the five musicians on stage. In addition to their dazzling skills on instruments, these people showed us the creativity in music. I often heard chuckles from nearby audience when Cheng’s music- indulged face and gesture was projected on screen, but I think people love him a lot. The intense virtuosity of Huang and Tseng, on the string and the keyboard, respectively, reminded me of Niccolo Paganini and Franz Liszt. Together with the improvisation of the drum and the elegance of the brass, these five brought Yoga’s vocal to a higher and deeper level musically. If there is anything that distinguishes Yoga from his peer, it is this open-mindedness and unique talent to make conversation with musicians from different genres. That is what music industry has long sought for: creativity.

The second half of the concert was launched with the likable Serenade to A Cuckoo, followed by Yoga’s rendition of Simply Red’s So Beautiful. It is especially touching to hear him sing the 80’, a decade that witnessed the rise of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston and the green pages of my school life….. Yoga again moved me with his current way of doing the classic, so it was sort of looking into the future rather than falling back to the past. And I have to say one got to have some guts and a lot of taste to do Rachel Yamagata! This I Wish You Love was a motion picture, with the director and narrator Yoga moving the audience to the twist and turn, the high and low, the joy and the despair of love. How can heartwrench be so painfully beautiful? It can, if it is with Yoga, the Limaginative, Lincredible, and Linfinite magician of music.

The few pieces before ending pushed the night onto the pinnacle of emotion. I just love his How Deep Is Your Love! This was probably the only piece tonight that Yoga played a little bit retro and made me feel that he was paying a tribute to Bee Gees. And the falsetto was crazy. He followed this with The Silhouette of Love (愛情的背影), a song that was completely reborn in his hand. This was justifiably the most emotional song of the night, with sobbing from all around me. I had to hold my breath to stop tears from trickling down my face. But how cruel he was to deliver Teresa Teng’s All I Care Is You (我只在乎你) right after this? Two years ago he sang it in Beijing and lost control to his emotion in the middle. Tonight in Taipei, he sang it to perfection – the melody by Takashi Miki was so infectious and irresistible. Twenty-six years ago I heard this song for the first time and I didn’t realize a thing. Now approaching my middle year and listening to it, I could only thank God for giving me so much love in my life. Music is the magic.

Those who know Yoga’s live concert well will always wait for the encore, and tonight was no exception. He flawlessly presented Lying (說謊), one of his most popular songs, in a not-so-jazz but definitely impressive way. Yet Yoga was saving the best for last: here came Radiohead’s No Surprises! I had been expecting him to sing songs that say something other than just love, something that reflects our social system and morality. So I was damn thrilled to hear Yoga and the musicians do this song. Well, it was not just a song, ‘cause it had a huge bridging part consisting of heavy string, crazy keyboard and frantic percussion. In some way it was more like a small-scale symphonic dance, a bewildering one. The whole house was on fire!

Sometimes I asked myself why I like Yoga’s music. Of course one could jump on his bandwagon simply because he is a fantastic singer with good looks and a lot of good songs under his sleeves. Yet for me, it is the depth and humanity in his music that makes me believe in him, and this belief only grows over time. It is not too different if you compare his way of doing music to that of a scientist doing science: Truth will reveal itself only when you have keen eyes, a smart brain, an open mind, and a humble heart. Yoga got them all.

noellethespy

謝謝「海洋」！
這次爵士音樂會真的讓每一位入場的聽眾都深受感動，
也感謝O大用有愛的文字寫出大家的感受啦！