Santa Monica, CA
“Chan has given Los Angeles a jazz big band with an utterly unique tonal personality.”
–– Kirk Silsbee, DownBeat Magazine
Dr. Alan Chan was the winner of the first ASCAP George Duke Commissioning Prize (2015) and ArtEZ Jazz Composition Contest (the Netherlands, 2011), and has also received awards and fellowships from Percussive Arts Society, Los Angeles County Arts Commission and Ucross Foundation, among others.
Alan Chan’s music often takes inspiration from his life experiences around the world, with a take of surprising wittiness and humor. His Los Angeles-based Alan Chan Jazz Orchestra (ACJO) was established in 2011. Their debut "Shrimp Tale" album was released in 2014, which received rave reviews and radio plays across the U.S. and abroad.
"The four movements of Moon Walk…are full of small and large wonders."
–– Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
Born and raised in Hong Kong, and having resided in both the United States and Europe, he began to collaborate in recent projects with Chinese instrumentalists to explore the possibility of fusing jazz, improvisation and traditional Chinese music together. The on-going “Moon Walk” Project is a collaboration with pipa player/improvisor Min Xiao-Fen from New York City, and the “Camel Walk” Project is with Boston-based suona player Guo Yazhi.
Coming from a classical background, he began composing for jazz big band under the mentorship of Gary Lindsay in Miami, then Vince Mendoza and Shelly Berg in Los Angeles and Jim McNeely in NYC, who fanned his flame of desire to create works for jazz ensembles.
He is currently a Lecturer at El Camino College in Torrance, California and at Wesleyan College in Macron, Georgia (online Master of Arts program). He was a clinician at American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers (ASMAC), as well as Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong Jazz Summer 2016, and a judge of Percussive Arts Society Composition Contests, SCI/ASCAP Student Composition Awards and ASMAC Bill Conti Big Band Arrangement and Composition Competition.
Thursday, January 5, 2023
11:00 PM – 12:00 AM US EST