ONE OF CHINA'S biggest rock stars stands on the stage of Joe's Pub in downtown New York City. It's March 9 last year and the bar is packed with a sell-out crowd that includes the likes of composers Tan Dun and Yo-Yo Ma.
Wu Tong is the talk of the town, having thrilled American audiences the previous night with his performance with the New York Philharmonic, in the debut of Bright Sheng's The Song and Dance of Tears. His solo on the sheng - the traditional Chinese mouth organ - brought rave reviews. But tonight he's dressed in leathers and returning to his role as a pioneer of Chinese music.
He's joined by three of New York's most distinguished experimental musicians. There's violinist Todd Reynolds, a composer and performance artist, hailed by The New Yorker as 'New York's reigning classical/jazz violinist'. There's David Cossin, the percussion star of Tan Dun's score of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, on an assortment of percussive instruments. Evan Ziporyn, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor and Head of Music at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), completes the quartet, with a bass clarinet.
They launch into an improvised take on the Chinese folk melody Blue Little Flower. It's a raw, wild improvised direction, as Wu leans into the microphone and lets out an immense flood of electric vocals, turning the ancient melody on its head. Through the night they take on a mix of folk songs and original compositions from China and America, and jam them into a new direction.
'No one had a pre-conception of what this was meant to be,' Wu says 18 months later, via a translator from his native Beijing. 'That's why it's music that's so indescribable and yet so exciting and different.'
This month, Wu is bringing the show to Hong Kong - an expanded version over two nights for the New Vision Arts Festival. It will be the first time he has played in front of a Hong Kong audience since his gig with mainland rockers Lunhai at the Coliseum in 2002.