Jazzing it up

Shanghai Restoration's self-titled 2006 album incorporates traditional Chinese instruments.

Shanghai Restoration's self-titled 2006 album, which incorporated traditional Chinese instruments, rose to the top 10 on Amazon.com, iTunes and MSN Music electronic charts.

In the years since, Liang has leased his music to Louis Vuitton's Kenzo Parfums, and worked with China Record Corp to restore and remix 1930s Chinese classics.

He's collaborated with American roots musician Abigail Washburn on an album of remixed songs sung by victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, from which all profits were donated to relief efforts.

He also released an album of traditional Chinese children's songs, inspired by the growing number of Western kids studying Mandarin.

In 2010, he earned a New York Emmy award for New York 360 Angle: Shanghai Restoration Project.

As a child, Liang studied classical piano but soon became enamored of jazz piano. He was occasionally taunted for being Chinese; one child told him all Chinese people were dirty, he recalls.

"In general I was never that interested in my heritage," he says.

"When you're growing up, you're just trying to fit in with the local culture; you don't want to be seen as different. Then after you've grown up, the discrimination becomes more subtle.

"People have expectations about the way you're going to behave, but that's the beauty of America: People have expectations of how other people are, and that gets shattered, over and over again."

Rachel Cooper, director of cultural programs and performing arts at the Asia Society in New York, has worked with Liang on several projects and events.

"He crosses over between cultures seamlessly," she says. "For him, it's clearly all one cultural world. His artistic world seems to include China, the US, his Western training and all the things he is as a creative person - and they all become part of his vision of the world. His creative universe doesn't make cultural distinctions."

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