Jazz Magazine Review
Mountains and Seas: A Collective Art Jam for Extraordinary Times
Kevin Le Gendre
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2025
Blending text, music, choreography and laser design, Mountains And Seas – Song Of Today is a bold, collective work that bridges Chinese cultural tradition and contemporary political urgency
An ‘art jam’ that brings together text, music, choreography and a laser show is not an ordinary night out at the theatre, but Mountains And Seas – Song Of Today is a vital response to extraordinary times that builds a bridge between Chinese cultural tradition and modernity. Although director-actor Xie Rong (Echo Morgan) and writer-actor-guitarist Daniel York Loh are the major driving forces of the work, it is very much a collective creation, with an expressive score from composer Beibei Wang, a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist who has worked with symphony orchestras around the world as well as leading British jazz artists, flautist Rowland Sutherland and vocalist Cleveland Watkiss.
The lighting and set design, courtesy of Danni Zheng and Ao Lei, deploy images and laser projections to depict landscapes and the inside of an aeroplane, while dancers Tash Tung and Fan Jiayi, narrator Jennifer Lim, percussionist-vocalist He Songyuan and flautist Chen Yuxiao bring meaning and nuance to the central story: the need for a united front to counter the climate crisis and a populist movement driven by racism, fear of the other and neo-imperialist agendas. The narrative thus uses as its foundation the idea that only mountains and seas really define the world, rather than countries, borders and all the senseless, bloodthirsty conflict that sullies it. York Loh shows a wily imagination in weaving together several pertinent subplots that take us from the awakenings caused by a long-haul flight to the nakedly hypocritical desire of Reform voters to see only white men staffing the NHS (on the same day that more claims emerge about Nigel Farage’s bigoted past).
The text is highly layered, bristling with anecdote and witty observation, but, most importantly, given the magnitude of the subject matter, it is not devoid of humour. Ken Loach is the one non-Black figure who does not get to be part of the Union Jack crowd, given his “wokery” – or, rather, social conscience. In any case, the combination of gutsy blues riffs, haunting flute, pounding drums and absolute gestural precision drawn from Peking opera coheres to make the piece a punchy, thought-provoking experience that could grow further in the fullness of time.
