Guitarist Eugene Pao
Guitarist Eugene Pao is considered by many to be the top jazz guitarist in Asia and the elder statesman of Hong Kong jazz. Adam White, who also obsesses over Miles Davis, spoke to him about smooth jazz and being cool.
HK Magazine: What’s the life like? Does it get you girls?
Eugene Pao: (Laughing.) That’s kind of a myth, I think. These days, I don’t know – back in the old days, maybe. I went to the States for high school, and that period was a really intense time of practicing. So I didn’t have too much of a social life. It was quite the opposite for me. But it’s great, man. This is what I want to do; it’s my passion. Being able to do it for a living – it certainly beats sitting in an office doing something you hate.
HK: What do you think of the term “smooooth jazz”?
EP: I really don’t like that kind of music very much. The name “smooth jazz” is used by radio stations to label something that’s easy to listen to, like background music. It’s not jazz on the cutting edge, jazz that demands people listen to it.
HK: Do you have a favorite artist?
EP: I listen to all kinds of great music. To be a jazz musician you must be influenced by the great past masters. You have to study Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and John Coltrane, people like that, because they laid down the whole language of jazz. Those are the three greatest jazz musicians. But there are much more, many great jazz artists, living and dead.
HK: I once heard someone say, “There are no wrong notes in jazz, just right ones played in the wrong places.”
EP: Right. Improvisation is a real personal thing. You have to learn all you can, but when you do it you have to forget about everything you’ve learned, and try to follow your heart and play from how you feel. It’s like talking. You learn the words, the alphabet, and put the words together to form sentences, then paragraphs. But when you’re speaking, you don’t spell S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G; it’s kinda like that.
HK: What do you think of the link in people’s minds between “jazz” and “cool”?
EP: There are all kinds of different groups in jazz. I think what people are associating “cool” with is the “cool” period of jazz. Like when Miles picked up his trumpet on the album “Kind of Blue.” You can just imagine Miles Davis with his sunglasses on, playing really economically, and every note just counts. I mean, it’s not a bunch of fast lines or anything, but every note hits you... just pick up that one disc, “Kind of Blue.” I mean, [from “So What”] that “bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum, baa-waa” – that’s like, cool, it’s just cool.
Eugene Pao plays every Thursday in April and May at RED, Level Four, Two IFC, 8 Finance St., Central, 8129-8882.