Jazz Articles about Lao Dan

About Lao Dan

Album Review

Lao Dan / Vasco Trilla: New Species

Read "New Species" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 17, 2026

A fortuitous meeting between Spanish drummer Vasco Trilla and Chinese reed player Lao Dan at a festival in the latter's homeland led to a concert and subsequent studio session. Yet it is that first encounter, recorded at Old Heaven Books in Shenzhen, a hub of the country's improvised-music scene, that New Species preserves. Both musicians share an experimental outlook and prove well matched, with Dan among the better-known Chinese practitioners to Western ears and Trilla commanding a formidable reputation as ...

Album Review

Lao Dan / Vasco Trilla: New Species

Read "New Species" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 3, 2026

There is a moment on “Tea Horse Road," the album's fourth track, where the saxophone drops to a near whisper and the percussion seems to breathe rather than strike. You realize you are not listening to two musicians from opposite sides of the world so much as two people who have agreed, without a word, on exactly how much silence costs. Lao Dan grew up in Northeastern China near the North Korean border. He showed enough early talent ...

Album Review

Lao Dan / Deng Boyu: TuTu Duo

by John Sharpe
January 11, 2022

The profile of jazz and improvisation from China rates roughly the same as the chances of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, or an anti-vaxxer's feel for community (if neither of those comparisons sits comfortably, just make up your own)—vanishingly small. So the release of TuTu Duo by reedman Lao Dan and percussionist Deng Boyu, on the Lithuanian NoBusiness imprint, arrives as something of an ear-opener. It presents an idiosyncratic blend of fire music-inclined free playing and folk-inflected melodies ...