Off the Trend

Xia Jia was trained as classical pianist, but fell in love with jazz during his studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where he is now based. “I realized that classical music couldn’t satisfy my exploration of musical freedom, so I started to learn jazz on my own,” he explains. Xia attempts to conceive a musical concept based on rationality, or a music less tethered to human emotion. Lv Bin is Xia's friend and intellectual counterpart. He practices various art forms and disciplines, but shies away from being categorized as an artist. For The Avant/Garde Diaries, Xia and Bin demonstrate why they are active protagonists in the new metropolitan individualism of modern-day Beijing.

Production by Markus M Schneider & Mumu Wang of Metroprojects Beijing / Photography Direction by by Jason Michael Lopez / Editing by Dai Xin / Music by Xia Jia / Sound by Terry Tu / Production Management by Michael Thai / Production Assistance by Liu Jing