When local goes global: Denton’s Li Xiaochuan Quartet tours China

by Michal Garcia of My Denton Music

This is not a review. This is a call to action, and part personal account of my time away from Denton. We must create more opportunities for the arts globally, learning to become as economically creative as we are musically creative. Trumpeter Li Xiaochuan, along with saxophonist Brian Girley, pianist Roberto Verastegui, and drummer Zach Forsyth, recently toured seven cities of China and played 17 gigs. We met up in Hong Kong and I had them interview with Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) to promote their three gigs here. With sincere original tunes as "Just the Tip" and "Slow Motion," the healthy-sized audiences left each night highly satisfied. The quartet's tour was purely of their own initiative without corporate sponsors or booking agents, no fancy hotel or even a modified school bus.

Creating a tour and traveling like the Li Xiaochuan Quartet is quite a leap of faith and certainly an investment musically and financially. Dentonites often take this leap with varying amounts of success. It is an extremely valuable experience, success or fail, but let us look more deeply into possible long term success. For perspective, awhile back there was a highly publicized sentiment to not play music in Denton unless as a paid gig. This was a drawn-out friendly discussion with important points on each side. Arguably, the strongest point about the Denton music scene was that even though musicians are not likely to be paid well in Denton, the scene itself heavily supports the creation of original, creative music.

Think about it. It simply doesn't make economic sense in our small cultural oasis saturated with a plethora of New York City-standard musicians that you could make much money as a musician. In a city like Hong Kong, occasionally referred to as "a desert for the arts," the demand for music tends to be much more mainstream. Great musicians and original music exist in Hong Kong. You can even make good money, but at Hong Kong's current state of creative acceptance, it's not easy to make original music. That puts any creative musician in a very unsettling scenario. How then, should a creative musician make a living in Denton or Hong Kong? While Denton has a plethora of musically creative musicians, how many of those players are economically creative? Making money is an art too! One needn't sell out or become a miser -- just keep the music pure and find out how to best market it.

This solution is reached only when a whole musical community (not just musicians) stops complaining and creates opportunities for each other: A few guys get together and create the NX35 festival; our My Denton Music community votes for Oso Closo and they get a burrito named after them; the same community votes for Andrew Tinker and he likely plays at the Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival. Where there is help to be done, step in and figure out a way to create a mutually beneficial and sustainable scene in which everyone leaves with their needs met. Keep in mind that volunteering or traveling halfway across the world to play a few gigs helps create the future framework in which bigger and better things can be manifested. Also, regardless of economy, the community must push musicians to stay creative.

In the spirit of creating more opportunities for the arts, if you're a band, take that leap of faith nationally and internationally. But next time, do it smarter and more economically creative. Find ways to sustain the next tour for your group, or another group. In the case of the Li Xiaochuan group, we sat down in Hong Kong's Victoria Park one afternoon for hours discussing how to make future tours better. Our main conclusion was that it would be nothing short of a social revolution to create the ideal environment worldwide that we would like as musicians. Let's get started!

I welcome your ideas: michalgarcia.com, michalgarcia@gmail.com or @michalgarcia on twitter.