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the forest on bogd uul

sacred tree on bogd uul

inside our chinese tent

the view outside the tent

andrew colwell joins the band

happy days at mealody

ubop: me, andrew and ganbat

the first ub jazz academy

The band are starting to learn some of my on-stage cues (Mike Green knows what I'm talking about!) and it's amazing to think how three musicians can communicate and create through the language of music, even though we don't share a common spoken language! I also met, through Ganbat, a Morin Khuur player and a Khoomei singer who will hopefully be part of my plans for an expanded U-Bop Band playing original compositions fusing Mongolian Traditional music with 21st Century developments in Jazz. Watch this space folks!

Tues July 11th
We took our first long hike into Bogd Khan Uul Strictly Protected Area yesterday, venturing into the forest that covers the whole moutain range. The forest is home to red deer, ibex and sable, as well as being the southernmost point of the larch forests that dominate Siberia. We didn't see any wildlife, except flies and mosquitos, but I guess that's to be expected when you're crashing around in the forest with heavy backpacks! We visited the large ovoo at the summit of the Bogd Uul ('Holy moutain') and rested awhile, played music and gazed out across the whole of the city and beyond. Incredible views from up on the peak. There are regular shamanic rituals performed up here and it would be great to witness one first hand at some point during our stay.

After a few hours walk into the forest we came across a very strange sight - a dead tree surrounded by branches deliberately propped against its trunk. I have read that some trees are sacred to shamans, especially trees that have been struck by lightning, and maybe that's the case with this one, who knows. Spooky! Fancy pitching for the night next to it campers? Well, we didn't, anyway...

What's incredible up here is that, even so close to the city (only an hour-or-so from Zaisan district to the ovoo on the peak), it's unlikely that you'll encounter any other people. In fact, during our whole time on the mountain, we only met one family, hiking in the opposite direction. The sense of tranquility and the feeling that you're witnessing flora and fauna unchanged since the founding of the city over 200 years ago is overwhelming. This quietitude had a definite impact on my plans for the Four Holy Moutains Project, and the overall dynamic in that work has changed from bombasatic mountain magnificence to one of solemn contemplation of impassive natural structure!

Pitching our cheap Chinese-made tent (35,000 Tugriks or approx £17) on a ridge not far from the peak, we get ourselves settled in for the night and as the sun sets over the west of the city, we are able to see the beauty of Ulaanbaatar by night - hundreds of lights in apartments and gers and, over at the Presidential Palace (Ikh Tenger) the guards are periodically patrolling the perimeter fence. Apparently Prince Andrew, over here to witness the Naadam Festival and the 800th Anniversary of the Great Mongolian State celebrations, is staying there tonight. As the darkness decends on our tent, we turn in for the night to brave the cold and are already looking forward to welcoming the rising sun in the morning!

Thurs July 13th
Spent today recovering from the camping trip of the last two days! Our backs feel like we've been carrying 300-pound gorillas around and our feet are blistered, but it was great fun! The main problem was the sheer weight of all the bottled water we had to drink - it's incredible how much you need to drink when you're up in the mountains. Of course, the more you drink, the lighter the backpacks get, but you also cut down on the amount of time you can spend up there. So, after the sun rose and provided us with some much-needed warmth, we made the four-hour journey back down off the mountain through fields of mating crickets and home to our cosy apartment in the city! Ray Mears eat your heart out...

Sat July 22nd
The guest artist for last night's Mealody Jazz Club performance was an American-Colombian musician, Andrew Colwell, who has been in Ulaanbaatar for the last year teaching English. Andrew is a guitarist, bass player and Khoomei singer (Khoomei is the traditional Mongolian o-tone singing). He hadn't picked up a double bass for over a year, but it didn't show at all! It was good to hear some decent walking basslines and also a couple of impromptu solos too. The band sounded really good and we played to a packed crowd. Word is that the British Ambassador will be attending next week's gig. Better get stocked up on Ferrero Rocher, haw haw... [Slightly disgruntled Editors Note, April 2007: he never came along once in the whole nine months I played at the club]

Andrew and myself are planning to work together on a Khoomei/Free Improv project during the coming year, with a view to recording the results and of course gigging it as much as possible at a suitably open-minded venue. Khoomei is an extraordinary style of singing and I believe it has many possible applications in the field of free improvisation. I will, of course, put up audio clips of anything we record over here and make the album available to buy through the website, as are some of my other recordings to date.

Fri July 28th
Just got home after this week's UBop gig. The best yet by far. Andrew played with us the whole night and provided a strong foundation for my improvisations. We were joined by Maralise, a French-Canadian violinist who is over in Ulaanbaatar with a travelling circus. They came over on their bicyles from Russia and next week will be off to China. They travel around and earn what they can from circus performance. It takes some serious guts to come to Mongolia without any definite contacts in place, and they have my wholehearted respect.

Maralise is an excellent violinist and performed with us on a couple of standards plus a couple of new arrangements (one by Ganbat and one by myself) of Mongolian songs - Setgelin Jiguur and Haluun Elgen Nutag (transcribed from off the stone tablet on Peace Avenue in the first week of our time over here). This beautiful song, it turns out, was composed by the father of one of my English languange students, Enkhbayar. It works really well as a slow 3/4 swing in C Dorian/Aeolian.

Andrew's Khoomei teacher came along to the performance tonight and pronounced our Jazz/Mongolian arrangements to be the best fusion of the two styles he had heard to date. Praise indeed from such a fine musician. The Mongolian songs do seem to fit perfectly into a Bossa Nova style without sounding cheesy in any way. Putting them into swing is a little more difficult and you have to select the right Mongolian song for the task. Some of them are written in 4/4 with three-bar phrases which I find extremely interesting to play over. The temptation to 'square them up' to four-bar phrases is sometimes overwhelming but to be avoided at all costs, otherwise where's the challenge?!

Sat July 29th
This week saw the launch of the UB Jazz Academy. The Academy is the brainchild of N. Ganbat, my friend and fellow musician in the Steve Tromans U-Bop Band, my trio-plus-guests band over here in Mongolia. He has long desired to help educate Mongolian musicians in the theory and practice of Jazz, steeped as they are in Traditional Mongolian music and Soviet-era 'accepted' Classical music. So, between 10 and 12 on Monday morning, and again on Thursday, I began teaching (for free!) a few piano students the basics of Jazz Theory as applied to the piano. The beauty of music is that, despite the language barrier, we were able to understand each other through the piano. I holpe that future classes will also include Jazz History, since Mongolians need to HEAR as much jazz as possible that they were previously denied by socialism. What a chance - and responsibility...