UCCA is proud to announce the release of the album Rauschenberg in Jazz: Nine Details by Ted Nash and the UCCA Workshop Ensemble. Recorded live at UCCA Beijing in 2016 on the occasion of the Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008, Port Arthur, Texas) solo exhibition “Rauschenberg in China,” the album is the fruit of collaboration between Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Ted Nash and a cast of China-based musicians with backgrounds in the musical worlds of jazz, classical, traditional folk, and more. The music drew inspiration from Rauschenberg’s The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece (1981-1998), the centerpiece of the exhibition. Nash led the group of musicians in an intense four-day workshop to compose and collectively develop a suite of music drawn directly from interaction with the exhibition, which was then performed at two concerts on August 19 and 20, 2016. The second concert provides the recording for this album. As a fusion of visual art and music as well as a cross cultural collaboration responding to the work of Rauschenberg—one of the first Western contemporary artists to engage with and exhibit in China—the project underlines UCCA’s belief in the power of art to transcend boundaries. Released by UCCA in China and Plastic Sax Records in America, Rauschenberg in Jazz: Nine Details is available on CD and will premiere on QQ Music in China with the support of Tencent Music (TME), after which it shall be available on all major streaming platforms. The album is executive produced by Cathy Barbash, and produced by Ted Nash, Beijing-based trombonist Matt Roberts, and UCCA Director Philip Tinari. 

Rauschenberg in Jazz: Nine Details may be seen as a continuation of Rauschenberg’s long and thoughtful engagement with sound and music. The artist was a long-term collaborator of avant-garde composer John Cage, who noted the influence of Rauschenberg’s monochromatic “White Paintings” on his groundbreaking “silent” composition 4’33”. Rauschenberg collaborated with other composers including Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, and Laurie Anderson, and created artworks featuring audio assemblages of found sound, translating his playful, often-collage based visual aesthetic into a new medium. Ted Nash also brings to the table unique experience bridging the gap between art and music: his composition Portrait in Seven Shades, premiered by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2007, was inspired by paintings from seven iconic modern artists featured in MoMA’s collection. This approach towards translating sight into sound—for example, expressing Dalí’s warped surrealism through an unusual time signature, or drawing connections between the Matisse’s playful Dance I (1909) and Thelonious Monk’s rhythmic style—would serve as a blueprint for Rauschenberg in Jazz. 

“Rauschenberg in China” not only showcased The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece, a 305-meter-long piece combining concepts and techniques from throughout the artist’s career, including monochromatic painting, collage, and the use of found objects, but also contextualized his 1980s encounter with China. In 1982 Rauschenberg visited China, documenting the early days of the Reform-era in the image collection Study for Chinese Summerhall (1983). He subsequently returned in 1985 to stage the exhibition “ROCI China” in Beijing, an event that would be transformational for the country’s then-nascent contemporary art community. In celebration of this pioneering cultural exchange, Cathy Barbash, an independent producer with decades of experience bringing American jazz, classical, and dance performers to China, proposed that UCCA host a musical residency to accompany “Rauschenberg in China.” With Philip Tinari and UCCA’s enthusiastic support, Barbash invited Nash to musically activate the exhibition. A workshop was then organized with the assistance of Beijing-based American trombonist Matt Roberts, a mainstay of the city’s jazz scene for his work in the Ah-Q Jazz Arkestra. Roberts quickly assembled a group of musicians including drummer Xiao Dou, bassist Charlie Wang, and guitarist Liang Ying (please find a complete list of performers and workshop participants below). 

Over four days, the twenty-odd workshop attendees made themselves at home in UCCA, wandering around The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece, stopping where inspiration struck, and improvising in situ. As workshop sessions occurred during regular museum hours, visitors could watch and listen to the musicians, adding a further degree of openness to this creative exchange. Nash recalls, “I assured my new friends that anything they felt was completely valid.” Participants from different musical backgrounds, even those with little prior composing experience, were encouraged to freely express themselves. By the end of the week, the workshop group had composed a new jazz suite focusing on nine sections of Rauschenberg’s artwork.

Just a day after the workshop ended, a streamlined performance ensemble took to the stage. The specific areas of The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece referenced in the suite are reproduced in the album liner notes, allowing listeners to trace the transformation from image to sound. To note just a few examples, in the opening movement “Picnic in the Rainbow,” a hushed beginning coalesces into a pastoral atmosphere highlighting Huang Yaqiong’s erhu (a fiddle-like two-stringed instrument), reflecting the section’s sky blue tones and pasted-on blankets. Short, sharp bursts of Nash’s saxophone are interspersed with silent pauses in the introduction to “Landfill,” seemingly echoing the section’s use of discarded industrial materials. Yet the piece soon moves into a jauntier upbeat rhythm befitting its bold primary colors. Last but not least, the section that inspired closer “March Through Eternity” features found images covered by gauzy washes of white paint, translated into ethereal interplay between rustling percussion, piano, and erhu that shifts into a rousing horn-led march, bringing to mind Rauschenberg’s lifetime of determined, fearless creativity. 

Rauschenberg in Jazz: Nine Details not only offers the listener more than an hour of beautiful, evocative music; it also documents a key UCCA exhibition and a crucial period in the museum’s history, as it transitioned from a founder-led institutional model to the ownership and stewardship of a new group of patrons. UCCA Director Philip Tinari comments, “I remember the two nights of concerts that came at the end of their work together not just for the beauty and intelligence of the music, but as a delightful respite from the swirl of concerns then engulfing us—a group of Chinese and American musicians, convening to draw inspiration from the work on view, and collaborating to produce something new and beautiful in its own right, in a spirit of shared learning and collaboration. It is hard to think of a happening more closely aligned with UCCA’s mission to deepen lives and transcend boundaries through art.”