Yet for all its international reach, the festival's core remains local. Huang has been deliberate about building space for Chinese musicians, seeing that as essential to the genre's future in the country. Groups like Red Hand, the TUTTI Band, and the boundary-pushing suona (double-reed instrument) virtuoso Liu Wenwen truly reflect the future of Chinese jazz. "The only way to develop the local jazz scene is to create platforms where local musicians can have their voices heard," Huang notes.

Huang's journey mirrors the gradual evolution of jazz in China — a genre that has slowly but surely found its voice in the Middle Kingdom. Born in 1970 into a musical family in Beijing, Huang was immersed in music from a young age. "My mother would bring me a bowl of noodles at noon, then a bowl of dumplings hours later," he recalls with a grin. "I'd say, 'I just ate!' But six hours had passed (without me noticing). That's what loving music feels like."

By the late 1980s, Beijing's cultural scene was opening up, and a chance encounter with an Italian trombonist introduced Huang, then a university student with boundless energy, to jazz. What began as curiosity soon became a lifelong pursuit.

The early years were far from glamorous — performances in nearempty hotel lounges and small clubs were the norm — but they shaped his understanding of jazz as something beyond performance: dialogue, community, and growth.