Jen Shyu: Song of Silver Geese

Avant Jazz / Free Improvisation / Avant-Garde
premiera polska: 07.08.2019
kontynent: Ameryka Północna
kraj: USA
opakowanie: digipackowe etui
opis:
jazzarium.pl:
Są na tym świecie jeszcze muzycy bezwzględni. Brutalni w swoim talencie. Bezlitośnie kreatywni, zdolni zwyrodnialcy. Nie tylko śpiewają, grają lub komponują, ale całym swoim życiem manifestują wykonywaną muzykę. Jen Shyu to wokalistka eksperymentalna, kompozytorka, tancerka, multiinstrumentalistka, performerka. W tym wszystkim nie zapomina o tym, by nie tylko zadziwiać coraz to odważniejszymi rozwiązaniami, ale przede wszystkim czarować swoim pięknym, wielowarstwowym głosem. Jej ostatnia wydana płyta „Songs of Silvver Geese” - w pełnej krasie prezentuje ją jako artystkę bezwzględną. Biegłą zarówno w kompozycji, instrumentacji i improwizacji, ale przede wszystkim w wokalistyce, której kosmiczny wymiar zwyczajnie zachwyca.

Na temat zdolności wokalnych Jen Shyu, a także jej niestandardowej techniki, możnaby napisać pracę doktorską. Zaledwie w jednym utworze („Door 4 – Simon Semaranga” ) potrafi zmysłowo melorecytować, konstruować białe, folkowe zaśpiewy, proste instrumentalne precyzyjne brzmienie, a także szlachetnie wibrować, ożywiać dźwięk za pomocą nasyconych alikwotów. To naprawdę niebywałe. Przy tym wszystkim, żadna z podjętych przez nią linii nie jest cudaczna, zbyt udziwniona. Jen Shyu wyznaje elegancką ekstrawagancję.

Na „Songs of Silver Geese” Jen Shyu śpiewa w ośmiu językach: angielskim, indonezyjskim, koreańskim, mandaryńskim, jawajskim, tajwańskim, w języku Tetum Wehali, a także, co najważniejsze w języku swojej muzyki. W wywiadach, Jen Shyu wielokrotnie powtarza, że rozwinęła swój indywidualny język wokalnej improwizacji: niescatowe logatomy, które używane są wyłącznie przez nią.

Jen Shyu odpowiada również za rozpisanie warstwy instrumentalnej. Na albumie olbrzymią rolę odgrywa kwartet smyczkowy „The Mivos String Quartet”, który tworzy egzotyczne i bardzo intymne tło dla rozważań wokalistki. Muzykom wtórują współpracujący od lat z Jen Shyu instrumentaliści z Jade Tongue. Kumulacją dla popisów obu tych grup najbardziej dojmujące są w przejmującym Door 8: World of Baridegi. Kakofoniczne solówki smyczków budują atmosferę niepokoju, który pomimo egzotycznego tekstu jest jednoznacznie zrozumiały. Wtórujący Jade Tongue rytmizuje kompozycje i nadaje im charakterystycznego nerwowego pulsu w momentach kulminacyjnych.

Jen Shyu to artystka niezwykła. Jej materiał na „Songs Of Silver Geese” to intelektualna podróż po całym świecie muzycznych wrażeń. Przepięknym zwieńczeniem albumu jest ostatni utwór – Contemplation. Nieco surowy, poetycki epizod w języku angielskim, to piękne, nieco oniryczne rozważania artystki, które doskonale podsumowują tę wielowątkową płytę. „I am alone, but not lonely” - zdanie powtarzane przez Jen Shyu, to otwarte zaproszenie do kontemplacji nad sztuką, tworzoną przez tę wspaniałą, bezkompromisową artystkę. Jest nad czym się zastanawiać!
autorka: Marta Jundziłł
Editor's info:
Song of Silver Geese has been included in The New York Times Best Albums of 2017. It has also received a rave 4.5 star review in the most recent issue of DownBeat.

Song of Silver Geese is the latest release from groundbreaking, experimental vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist and dancer Jen Shyu, whose critically acclaimed Sounds and Cries of the World was praised by The Nation and The New York Times as one of the best releases of the 2015. Named a 2016 Doris Duke Artist and voted Rising Star Female Vocalist in the 2017 Downbeat Critics Poll, NPR extols her music as “intensely personal. Nothing sounds quite like it…[It] operates in some unpatrolled border zone, blurring lines between folk song and art song, the traditional and the avant-garde, Western and Eastern, between waking consciousness and dream logic.” This is research and experience, absorbed and reimagined.” The Wall Street Journal praises, “Her voice, a wonder of technical control and unrestrained emotion, tells a story dotted with well-researched facts and wild poetic allusions. She claims both as her truths.”

Born in Peoria, Illinois, to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, Shyu is widely regarded for her virtuosic singing and riveting stage presence, carving out her own sui generis space in the art world. She has performed with saxophonist and 2014 MacArthur Fellow Steve Coleman since 2003, singing on his critically acclaimed new release Morphogenesis (Pi 2017), and has collaborated with such musical innovators as Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, Bobby Previte, Chris Potter, and Michael Formanek. A Stanford University graduate in opera with classical piano, violin, and ballet training, Shyu has studied traditional music and dance in Cuba, Taiwan, Brazil, China, South Korea, East and West Timor, Japan, and Indonesia, in each place conducting extensive research and submerging herself in the language, culture, history, musical traditions and rites. Her 2014 stage production Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, directed by renowned Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho, and her 2017 stage production of Nine Doors, directed by Romanian director Alexandru Mihail, mark the culmination of these studies and her all-encompassing vision of ritual performance.

Described by Shyu as “a multilingual, ritual music drama”, Song of Silver Geese combines composed structures, new improvisational systems, and vocal techniques informed by her 14 years of immersive fieldwork of various languages and traditions, including East Coast Shaman music of Korea; folkloric music and ceremonial texts from the Wehali Kingdom of West and East Timor; folk song from Hengchun, Taiwan; and Javanese ‘sindhenan’, improvisational singing with gamelan, from Indonesia. Her work is utterly unique, unmatched in its combination of musical forms and languages drawn from these traditions and their respective cultures, Western-composition, jazz and improvised music, and epic narrative. Originally conceived as a performance piece with dancer-improviser Satoshi Haga, the music also melds the improvisational ethos of her group Jade Tongue featuring Chris Dingman (vibraphone), Mat Maneri (viola), Thomas Morgan (bass), Satoshi Takeishi (percussion), Anna Webber (flutes), Dan Weiss (drums); and the Mivos Quartet, an acclaimed group devoted to the music of contemporary composers. Shyu herself is featured on vocals, dance, Taiwanese moon lute, gayageum (traditional Korean zither), piano, and sometimes even violin in performance.

Song of Silver Geese is dedicated to two of Shyu’s mentors whose texts comprise the core of this piece: Taiwanese engineer and poet, Edward Cheng, who passed away from cancer in 2015, and Sri Joko Raharjo “Cilik”, a master of Wayang Kulit, the Javanese art of shadow puppetry, who died with his wife and infant son in an automobile accident at the age of 30. His six-year-old daughter, Nala, who survived the crash, is the inspiration for the central character of this work. In the narrative, Shyu imagines Nala just after the moment of impact from the tragic accident, encountering three spiritual guides who help her through her grief with messages of solace and hope. They include Timorese woman warrior Hoâar Nahak Samane Oan, who disguises herself as a man to defeat a rival king; Baridegi from Korean folklore, known as the mother of all shamans; and Chen Da, the half-blind, nomadic Taiwanese moon lute virtuoso who defined Hengchun folk song. The work’s nine compositions are conceived as a series of “Doors” that each open into its own fantastical world. This trope is partly inspired by a story Shyu encountered on the radio program This American Life, whose episode “Act One. Really Long Distance” tells the touching story about the Kaze no Denwa (Phone of the Wind), a phone booth in Japan that grievers now visit to speak to loved ones whom they lost in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. This past February, Shyu met the phone booth’s owner, who gave her permission to compose music to his poetry in Nine Doors. Sung in English, Indonesian, Javanese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, Tetum Wehali, and Korean, Song of Silver Geese reflects the parallels that exist between life and death, different cultures, and the importance of empathy over the destructive assumptions that divide humanity. That it all comes together seamlessly is a testament to Shyu’s complete immersion into these art forms and the strength of her intuition and creative voice. Ben Ratliff in The New York Times calls her concerts “the most arresting performances I’ve seen over the past five years. It’s not just the meticulous preparation of the work and the range of its reference, but its flexibility: She seems open, instinctual, almost fearless.”

Ever restless, Shyu spent part of this year in Japan studying the biwa and its traditional song in addition to studying Japanese, adding to the eight languages she already speaks fluently. She is currently in West Timor delving deeply into the oral tradition of “speaking in pairs” and learning the ancient language of Tetum Wehali. After she returns to the United States, she will embark on the first leg of her SOWN / SEWN (Songs of Our World Now / Songs Everyone Writes Now) Tour, which aims to plant the seeds of creativity, intercultural understanding, and empowerment across all 50 states. She will present free concerts and interactive, intermedia workshops, focusing on schools and communities that get little exposure to cultural and artistic diversity.

Shyu’s constant exploration is ultimately about discovering universal truths as expressed through music. Her research is never about a sampling of exotic sounds, but instead about gaining a deep understanding of cultures from the ground up, which reveals her deep faith in the powers of love and trust in humanity. Her musical philosophy can perhaps best be summed up by the last lines of “Door 9: Contemplation”, by Edward Cheng: “Life has no boundaries, when every place can be home.”

Pitchfork - ocena 7.4:
The experimental jazz and classical composer’s newest work uses wildly divergent sounds to conjure a subtle, mournful mood.

Many experimental musicians draw inspiration from multiple styles. Fewer make these excursions sound as fluid and natural as the composer and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu does. Most familiar to contemporary jazz audiences, thanks to her frequent presence as a bandleader and session player on the celebrated NYC-based jazz imprint Pi Recordings, Shyu’s work holds just as much appeal for fans of modern chamber composition. In live performance, she’s apt to incorporate a variety of dance traditions; the press release for her latest album cites Javanese shadow puppetry as a key influence. While madly diverse interests can make for a fascinating profile page, the trick for a composer is to make all those reference points cohere into something new.

Song of Silver Geese shows Shyu working at a high level. The nine-movement album is made up of selections from a longer stage show, and the recorded versions have plenty of dramatic movement. Over the course of the work, which is dedicated to two of Shyu’s recently deceased mentors, she employs a dizzying range of languages: English, Indonesian, Javanese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, Tetum Wehali, and Korean. During “Door 1: Prologue—Song of Lavan Pitinu,” she delivers a few lines that give a sense of the album’s funereal tinge: “I’m no longer able to recount in detail the story of my life/Now that it’s twilight and there is so much silence.”

At the same time, the supporting music reflects Shyu’s joyous performer’s sensibility. While plucking a spare and haunting motif on a string instrument, Shyu can also bring vivid variety into her vocal lines. Her straight-tone notes have a poise that communicates profound calm. And when her voice breaks, it does so with precision. After this, the introduction of vibrato can suggest a new sense of exploration. This all makes for subtle material, and yet Shyu’s way of navigating these slight changes feels fully alive, giving an extra emotional dimension to an otherwise mournful album.

Her instrumental writing for other players thrives on a similar sense of contrast. The Mivos String Quartet, guests from the avant-garde classical sphere, appear alongside the more jazz-like backing of performers who have worked with Shyu before, in her Jade Tongue ensemble. “Door 3: Dark Road, Silent Moon” is driven by the string ensemble, whose members seem to revel in the brief solo jaunts and ensemble dances that Shyu has scheduled in between passages flush with long, meditative tones.

A hint of jazz propulsion begins to emerge during “Door 5: World of Hengchun.” But Shyu is saving the real bash for the penultimate track, “Door 8: World of Baridegi.” During its most feverish passages, this track offers a concise experience of the qualities that make Shyu such a magnetic performer. Here, conceptual density and improvisational fire manage to complement, rather than obscure, her overall compositional design. There may never be a genre heading that can do justice to such a method. But that is no great loss. Shyu’s personal language—the product of singular study and many curiosities—can tell her story persuasively on its own.
by Seth Colter Walls

All About Jazz - ocena * * * *:
The dramatic and sublime The Song of the Silver Geese is vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu's magnum opus. On it Shyu draws from her dual cultural ancestry as well as other east Asian heritages to craft memorable performance art replete with dynamic spontaneity, unique instrumentation and exquisite poetry. The nine-piece suite is divided into "doors" and each segment brims with a mystical ambience and a surreal air.

Shyu opens "Door 4: Sinom Semarangan" for example, with her resonant lute strings echoing in silence like shimmering moonlight on dark waters. Her contemplative singing is almost prayer-like especially as her voice soars and flitters over percussionist Satoshi Takeishi's dark thuds and drummer Dan Weiss' splashing cymbals. The rest of the ensemble forms a vibrant and fluid musical aura around Shyu. Violist Mat Maneri bows with expressive melancholy, bassist Thomas Morgan plays single note atmospheric refrains while reed player Anna Webber's flute mirrors Shyu's agile vocals.

Morgan's sparse reverberations set an expectant mood on the haunting "Door 2: World of Java." Eastern tones pepper Webber's angular lines while the Mivos quartet fades in an out of the backdrop adding a delightfully dark tension to the atmosphere. Webber solos with a lullaby like lyricism seamlessly linking this track to the next.

Shyu, brilliantly, has forged a singular language out of the several in which she sings including, Javanese and Mandarin among others. The mercurial transition from one tongue to the next also helps build a kaleidoscopic and emotive narrative that unifies the entire recording. For instance, on "Door 8: World of Baridegi" her passionate chanting, that rumbling percussion, vibraphonist Chris Dingman's chiming mallets and Mivos' riotous strings buoy, evokes ardent and incandescent spirituality. In contrast the closer "Door 9: Contemplation" is a serene recitation of Taiwanese poet Edward Cheng's verse in English accompanied by bursts of zither.

Shyu has not only crossed genres and cultures she has also fused various modes of artistic expression for a one of a kind creative statement. The Song of the Silver Geese is a bold and adventurous work that provokes, gratifies and sooths the soul. It is definitely one of the most exceptional releases of 2017.
By HRAYR ATTARIAN

muzycy:
Jen Shyu - vocals, Taiwanese moon lute, Korean gayageum, piano

Jade Tongue:
Chris Dingman - vibraphone
Mat Maneri - viola
Thomas Morgan - bass
Satoshi Takeishi - percussion
Anna Webber - flutes
Dan Weiss - drums

Mivos Quartet:
Jennifer Choi - 1st violin
Erica Dicker - 2nd violin
Victor Lowrie - viola
Mariel Roberts - cello

utwory:
Door 1: Prologue--Song of Lavan Pitinu 2:10
Door 2: World of Java 3:34
Door 3: Dark Road, Silent Moon 4:12
Door 4: Sinom Semarangan 12:09
Door 5: World of Hengchun 5:34
Door 6: World of Wehali – 4:57
Door 7: World of Ati Batik 3:11
Door 8: World of Baridegi 7:36
Door 9: Contemplation 5:44

wydano: 2017-11-10
nagrano: Recorded At Systems Two & Oktaven Audio

more info: www.pirecordings.com