Carsick Cars taken from Sound Kapital. Credit: Matthew Niederhauser

This postcard from New York (via Beijing) was contributed by Nick Frisch

Last week, New York witnessed an astonishing wave of Chinese music – or two overlapping waves, to be precise. Best-known to Danwei readers might be D-22 club staples Carsick Cars, PK 14, and Xiao He. They kicked off their inaugural tour of the US playing two book launches in New York on Wednesday and Thursday (full disclosure: your correspondent authored a chapter in one of the books). By Friday night, indie New York was buzzing and the bands packed venues in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan before taking their tour national.

At the über-hipster Glasslands venue in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg, one bearded, bespectacled bouncer looked positively astonished: “I’ve never seen a crowd like this. There’s a line out the door!” Another source of astonishment: “Wow! There are Chinese kids with tight pants and guitars who play music like our music!” Indeed; though Glasslands was certainly the hipsterati’s spot to see and be seen last Friday, it wasn’t immediately apparent that the crowd’s appreciation rose beyond the “Woah! Dude! Novelty! Cachet! China’s hip!” level.

PK14 taken from Sound Kapital. Credit: Matthew Niederhauser

More’s the pity: following the always-entertaining, always-gruff Xiao He, PK 14 turned in a terrific set. Carsick Cars, darlings and avatars of the Beijing scene, came off a bit lackluster compared to some recent D-22 and Yugong Yishan shows. But you wouldn’t have known it from the chatter in the crowd: scenesters know a hot trend when they see one, and lavished more praise than was really called for. But Jeffray Zhang and his band finished strong: their signature closing anthem “Zhongnanhai” brought forth a shower of unlit cigarettes to the stage, a sure sign of Beijing rock savants in the crowd.

Meanwhile, in the higher-toned confines of Carnegie Hall (full disclosure, again: this writer was in town working for them), that prestigious institution was wrapping up its “Ancient Paths, Modern Voices” China festival, which concluded Tuesday night. The program represented several generations of artists who learned their craft at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music. The legendary “class of 1978,” named for the year they started at the just-reopened school, included big names like Tan Dun, Chen Qigang (of Olympic ceremony fame), Chen Yi, and Zhou Long. Of more recent Central Conservatory vintage was Lang Lang, who played Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto during Tuesday night’s festival finale. And at the youngest extreme, Li Shaosheng – born in 1988 – had a piece premiered in Alice Tully Hall under Carnegie’s aegis. Carnegie’s PR machine worked overtime, scoring several glowing reviews from the New York Times.

Carnegie Hall decked out with Chinese lanterns

The week’s only letdown: your correspondent, blessed with several extra tickets, wasn’t able to find mutually convenient times to bring any Carnegie musicians to Beijing rock shows, or Beijing rockers over to Carnegie. This is all the more disappointing as Beijing represents crossover possibilities that once seemed so distant in New York City, where for many postwar decades musicians were bitterly divided between the academy-based, audience-hostile uptown faction and the rock-composition oriented downtown faction. Beijing’s academic musicians and experimental-rocker types often take great pains to distance themselves from the opposing camp – noise musician Yan Jun, for instance, rails against the academy, while many CCoM musicians profess a deep and true ignorance of Beijing’s music scene – but the truth is that they are never more than a degree or two of separation apart.

Carsick Cars’ Zhang, for instance, composed a chamber piece for the Beijing New Music Ensemble. CCoM-trained qin player Wu Na regularly works with Beijing’s grittier, anti-establishment experimental musicians. Fittingly, there has been some recent talk of Zhang possibly writing music for Bang on a Can, the New York ensemble that made a splash in 1980s when they started inviting musicians from the city’s fighting factions to perform at the same concerts. Even more fittingly, Bang on a Can visited Beijing last month. After their marquee show in the swanky Poly Theater as part of the Beijing Music Festival, they showed up for a surprise show at D-22.

So China’s classical-rock gap remained wider in New York City than it is in Beijing, at least for now. But hope always remains: given the rapturous reception both received, though, it might not be too long before New York sees another wave of Chinese music, with Beijing as its most prolific source.