Backstage at the SFJAZZ Center on Aug 4, Malcolm Clark and Annie Meyer were already dressed for the bandstand: black jackets, red pants and black canvas shoes.
The San Francisco concert was the ensemble's last US stop before they left for a tour running through Aug 15 with stops in Taichung, Shanghai and Beijing.
But when the two musicians talked about what they most hoped to find on the other side of the Pacific, they kept coming back to something they already knew how to do: listen.
"I know it's cliche, but when people say jazz is a language that can be understood by everyone, I think that's like a connective tissue that connects both cultures," Meyer said. "You're able to communicate with audiences in a way that you couldn't by speaking."
That idea is at the heart of this summer's tour by Carnegie Hall's National Youth Orchestra Jazz, or NYO Jazz, a band of players aged 16 to 19 chosen through a national audition process.
