Producer David Liang’s Shanghai Restoration Project has been wowing the music industry across the globe since its inception in 2006. The juxtaposing of two worlds of eclectic melodies has garnered Shanghai Restoration Project a list of accolades as long as the distance from Shanghai to New York, where David Liang is based. His mix of 1930’s old-time Shanghai Jazz and western contemporary electronic and hip-hop has debuted as MSN Music’s “New Artist of the Week,†was featured in the iTunes Top 20 Electronic Albums in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, and Europe, and featured in world-wide advertising campaigns such as Kendo Parfums use of “Introduction†an evocative little ditty reproducing the unique Shanghai Jazz sound of the 1930’s, and thus providing the starting point of Shanghai Restoration Project’s musical and visual story of a city, at The Viper Room, where black and white projected visuals of old Shanghai provide the perfect backdrop.
For the audience it was a mesmerizing journey into the past that is soon jolted into the present with a change of musical pace and the whirl and color of contemporary images of Shanghai. It’s the perfect segue into one of the largest and fastest changing cities in the world. The mix of these two worlds is reflected in Shanghai Restoration Project’s song titles and celebrates the colonial street names and places such as “The Bund, “Bubbling Well Road,†and Avenue Joffe.†There’s no denying Shanghai’s colonial past, on the contrary, it is celebrated. And this is what David Liang achieves exquisitely by mixing haunting and addictive melodies of the past with the ambient electronic melodies and hip-hop funk of the present in songs like “Pearl Tower.†This is international music at its best and the reason David Laing’s music has crossed over borders and time lines. Tonight he was joined on stage by remarkable singers, Heath Brandon, Taleen Kalbian, and the breathtaking ethereal sound of Di Johnson on “Jade Buddha Temple.†The audience was swept away on an audio and visual 24-hour journey through Shanghai that had many people talking of future trips to the city.
When I met with David Liang at his hotel the next day he was nothing short of enthusiastic and his undeniable passion for his music and the Shanghai Restoration Project was infectious. He’s a wonderful talker, intelligent, and courteous. He conducted a great deal of research for this project, some of which was on his doorstep. His parents fled Shanghai for Taiwan during the Communist takeover and later moved to the USA. David was born in Kansas and played piano from an early age. He was encouraged by his mother, a sometime singer, to experiment with form. He studied Mathematics at Harvard and after graduation joined the corporate business world. But in 2003 he ditched his job to work as a music producer full-time, working with Bad Boy Records, Universal Records, and Motown to hone his skills. His music was featured in the 2005 TriBeCa Film Festival winner, “Red Doors,†and in 2006 he formed the concept that would become the Shanghai Restoration Project.
I ask him if he’s surprised by his quick success and I guess from his response that he’s not stopped to think about it. His influences run the gamut from American record producers such as Quincy Jones to jazz performers, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Evans, and Johnny Hartman to classical composer, Claude Debussy and tenor, Enrico Caruso. He cites Debussy’s unorthodox music and its disregard for traditional ideas of chord tonality and structure as one of his greatest influences.
David talks about his world travels and the music that has influenced his own style. He believes that all people should travel and see other worlds, for only then can people understand one another and realize that people all over want the same simple things. He’s a true internationalist. I ask him if he sees it as his mission in life to show the world the wonder of Shanghai and he jokes about working for the Shanghai tourist industry. He hopes that his music and visuals will encourage people to visit Shanghai. “If my music can influence people and can introduce to them a modern Shanghai as a place to visit, then I have accomplished something.â€Â
He’s been invited to play in Taiwan in two weeks but has yet to play in Shanghai, due in part to the Chinese government’s reluctance to foreign musicians, even Chinese American ones.
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