Johnny Schuetten performs at the Shake the Lake festival in Beijing on September 16. （Photo/Courtesy of Chloe Zuo）
While it may not be all that difficult to catch a performance by European musicians in China, it's a rare opportunity for festivalgoers to experience a music gala that features vintage decorations, good food and natural scenery, all the while being held at a fancy hotel.
Under the mid-autumn moon, music fans drifted into a concert hall where they sat down in chairs decked out in bright leather around a round table to enjoy a four-course meal and a solo performance. Bellies full, they later made their way to the ballroom where they could dance the night away to some boogie-woogie jazz music.
A celebration of everything jazz, the Shake the Lake International Music Festival made its mainland debut on Friday night at the Sunrise East Kempinski Hotel in Beijing's suburban Huairou district.
The two-day event consisted of a music night and a jazz brunch the following day.
"It was a great show last night. If you see it from the point of view of the audience, they had a lot of things to experience," Richie Loidl, one of the festival's two founders, told the Global Times on Saturday.
Reflecting on the dancing crowd the night before, Loidl said he saw the "sunny side" of Chinese people and was thrilled to have the opportunity to communicate with them through the universal language of music.
"China is a very bright country of the world. China is rising, is up-and-coming and now China's shaking."
Winning combination
Since 1955, lake Wolfgangsee in Austria has been the home of the Shake the Lake festival, which focuses on special "lakeside sessions." After more than 60 years of development, the festival has grown into one of the most famous boogie-woogie festivals in Europe.
According to Loidl, the word "shake" in the festival's name represents the musical elements, while "lake" represents a lifestyle.
"So music element, lifestyle element, (two) beautiful things together and we recreate things out of that," Loidl said.
"It's an idea of living, music and the beautiful things of life."
With a long brand tradition and close relationship with Europe, the Kempinski Hotel overlooks Yanqi Lake, making it a great venue for the lakeside festival.
Using hotels as venues is also a feature of Shake the Lake. According to Loidl, this fits in with the festival's "lifestyle" concept along with "great fashion" and "great cars."
"It's an international lifestyle," Loidl said, adding that they chose to come to China this year to bring this "international standard" to Beijing.
Feeling blue
Boogie-woogie is a fast piano subset of jazz that originated from the blues in big U.S. cities such as Chicago and New York. After it spread to Europe, the Shake the Lake founders decided the "fun" nature of boogie-woogie made it the perfect type of music to combine with natural landscape and their ideas for a great lifestyle.
"I think it's great. Especially the idea to combine all that stuff - food, music and lifestyle," pianist Martin Schmitt said about the show.
"Usually, you can only do one thing if you go to a concert, you sit there and that's it. Or you go to a dinner, enjoy your wine and food, and that's it."
Four years ago when Loidl first went to Shanghai for a performance, he was asked whether the extremely low number of Chinese boogie-woogie players in China meant that Chinese didn't get the blues or couldn't understand blues music.
While it's true that blues-lovers are in the minority in China, Loidl remains hopeful for the future of the festival.
"I think it's a process. After all it's the first time (for Shake the Lake in China). So if we do another time, do it next year, keep repeating it, then little by little, you'll get them," Schmitt told the Global Times.
The performances certainly were something of a new experience for audiences.
During his solo show the first night, Schmitt interacted quite a lot with the audiences via a series of amusing musical notes.
Watching their reactions, he picked up the pace, going faster and faster to make the audience wonder how he was managing to tap out such rapid notes with just his fingers.
The festival's other founder, Johnny Schuetten, presented a composition he wrote especially for China during the dinner.
Schuetten said it was a "remodeling of something we all thought about many, many years ago."
"The music of China is a different language using different words, but music expresses the same human feelings all over the world," he added.
