CONWAY — When Conway Planning Board Chairwoman Mary McClintock took the podium to introduce her board at the Sept. 24 Special Town Meeting, she was noted that her fifth member could not be present.
“Andy Jaffe is teaching jazz in Taiwan and not able to be here tonight,” she said nonchalantly, “which is a really good excuse for not being at Town Meeting.”
Jaffe, an internationally known jazz pianist and composer, flew to the East Asia island nation in mid-September to conduct workshops at Taipei National University of the Arts and play concerts for jazz lovers. He was introduced to Taiwan during his 30-year teaching career at Williams College, when he was recruited through student Wang Leehom, now a cultural star in Asia, to serve as an external reviewer for a new program at Taiwan National University of the Arts around 2000. This is Jaffe’s sixth trip to Taiwan and he plans to return to Conway, where he has lived for 34 years, in mid-December.
Asia may not be the locale Americans picture when they think of jazz, but Jaffe, speaking from Taipei, said the art form has a strong following there.
“It’s popular everywhere in the world. It’s a lingua franca that musicians everywhere are getting into. It’s a new form of classical music,” he said, adding that most of his colleagues there attended top music schools in the United States. “I’m not trying to make money here — I’m just trying to break even and have fun and enjoy my time and share some of my experiences with the folks here.”
He said there is “quite a jam session scene of aspiring students in clubs here.”
Jaffe’s ongoing faculty position is as a teacher in the Impact Music Program at Taipei National University of the Arts, though this semester, he also teaches four classes and ensembles at an adult jazz workshop hosted in a Buddhist center. He has also taught at Fu Jen Catholic University. This semester, he also conducts the student big band at National Taiwan University.
Jaffe said as appreciated as jazz is in Taiwan, its practice is not as traditional as in American cities.
“I’m conducting a big band here, and there’s no (Duke) Ellington in it,” Jaffe said, referring to the jazz legend. “That’s a problem for the authenticity and the roots of the art form, but it’s not unique to Taiwan. There’s no place like New York, which is deeply, deeply committed to studying the music historically and keeping those traditions alive.”
Jaffe said the musicians in Taiwan integrate traditional Chinese and Taiwanese music to create “really extraordinary-sounding music.”
The 66-year-old, who was born in Washington, D.C., and lived much of his life in New York, grew up listening to jazz and Jewish music at home and attended graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he worked as a teaching assistant for jazz drummer and composer Max Roach and jazz saxophonist Fred Tillis. He went on to teach about five years at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where his students included well known jazz musicians Branford Marsalis, Wallace Roney (who still records with Jaffe and is featured on his most recent CD), Marvin “Smitty” Smith, Frank Lacy, Steve Vai and Claire Daly.
Jaffe had a stint playing and living in New York and France before returning to the Pioneer Valley, where he taught at Westfield State, Community Music School of Springfield, Amherst College, Tufts University and Williams College. He went full-time at Williams in 1999, and he retired last year. He said one of his students was Kristen Anderson Lopez, who with husband Robert Lopez, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, “Let It Go,” in the 2013 Disney hit “Frozen.”
Jaffe said his commute to Williams College was typically 50 minutes each way, though a bit longer and more treacherous on the rural, winding roads during the winter.
Jaffe is included in Lewis Porter’s “Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians” on the Institute of Jazz Studies’ website, and he has written for and performed with the Greg Hopkins Big Band, the Max Roach Double Quartet, The King’s Singers and saxophonist Bill Barron.
Jaffe met his wife, Gisele Litalien, a musician in her own right, when she was a Smith College student and took Jaffe’s jazz theory course at UMass Amherst. Litalien said they “kept crossing paths” over the next 10 or so years, and eventually “the moment was right.” A passionate fan of Brazilian music, she plans to visit her husband in Taiwan in early December, and Jaffe has arranged for her to perform with a Brazilian guitarist he knows.
“That will be really fun for me,” she said. “I’m hoping to do some of other things — musically — there.”
Litalien, one of the founders of the Valley Jazz Voices choir, said Jaffe seems to be truly in his element in Taiwan.
“He loves going and he keeps going back,” she said. “He’s developing so many wonderful contacts and opportunities there. Taiwan seems to be the place where he can really do the things he’s best at. Andy loves western Mass., he taught at Williams for many years, we built our lives and raised our families here, but there are limited ways he can showcase his writing, arranging and playing. Taipei is such an international city, and it draws really interesting musicians from all genres from all over the world.”
Jaffe said he has immersed himself in the culture of Taiwan, a country roughly the size and population of New Jersey. He rides the country’s immaculate and punctual public transportation, and people engage him in conversation and compliment his Chinese language skills. He regularly orders food from the country’s fusion restaurants and famous night markets, and he said the flavors and quality of fruit grown there are indescribable.
He said he is careful to act as a goodwill ambassador for the United States in a time when American politics and leadership are extensively scrutinized around the world.
“I can remember being in Europe during the Reagan and Bush years, and there was a good deal of negativity toward America,” Jaffe said. “It’s somehow different now, especially here, because people realize that the person who’s running our government now doesn’t represent most of us. But, I’m aware of the fact that, in a way, all of us, when traveling, do create an impression of who we really are as a people and a culture.”
Reach Domenic Poli at dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.