Triggering a passion for jazz

Over the next six months, he began to discover another side of jazz: how modern, innovative and forward-looking it could be. The more he listened and explored, the more his perspective shifted. What he had once dismissed as overly intellectual revealed itself to be a rich, evolving expression. That was the turning point. From then on, Su stopped treating jazz casually and committed himself to studying it seriously.

He traveled to Amsterdam to study jazz at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and then to the New School in New York. Su's education was a trilogy of contrasts. Shanghai gave him structure and a foundation in the basics of jazz; Amsterdam sharpened his technical skills but left him disillusioned with rigid conservatory norms; New York, by contrast, liberated him. "Here, diversity is not optional," he says. "If you can make it work, your intuition is valid. I felt free for the first time."

This freedom is evident in Automatism. Recorded at the acclaimed Bunker Studio with some of New York's brightest young jazz musicians, the album is a dialogue between virtuosity and spontaneity. Su recalls the recording sessions with a mix of nostalgia and bemusement. "We recorded 12 tracks in six hours. I'd been nervous for three months. Mistakes happened, and we left them in. That's the magic — music isn't about perfection; it's about honesty."

The tracks themselves are intimate windows into his life. Neon Phase captures the sensory overload of Times Square — its relentless lights, noise and midnight solitude. Another piece draws inspiration from Beth, a character from the American TV drama, The Walking Dead, blending childhood nostalgia with the melancholy of loss. Other compositions evoke romantic longing, fleeting human encounters and memories of his days in New York. "I get inspiration from people as much as from places," Su says. "Some songs are essentially portraits."

Despite his dedication to jazz, Su admits that he rarely listens to it anymore. His current auditory obsessions are more eclectic: guqin (a seven-stringed Chinese zither) recordings, voice broadcasts, and other sounds that feel new and uncharted. "The joy for me," he says, "is discovering something I've never heard before. That happens maybe once in a thousand songs."

Touring Beijing and Shanghai with his New York collaborators, Su witnessed the global appetite for jazz and the evolution of Chinese audiences. "People born in the 2000s have a far broader musical understanding. Every generation has to find its own voice; you can't just live off the past." Automatism is, in a sense, his contribution to that continuum — a snapshot of one young musician's consciousness at a specific moment in time.

What makes Su's story particularly compelling is his insistence on individuality within tradition. He rejects the notion that jazz must be performed or recorded "correctly". Instead, he views it as a living conversation, one that changes with every player, every city, and every moment. It's a philosophy that is already shaping his future. Though he won't likely revisit Automatism, the album will remain a milestone from a formative stage, a reminder that jazz, at its core, is not about perfection — it's about presence.

"It's great for China's jazz scene that Trigger could bring some spice and life to it," said American jazz pianist Aaron Parks.