Jen Shyu

Born in Peoria, Illinois, USA, from Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, 2016 Doris Duke Artist Jen Shyu (Chinese name: 徐秋雁) is an experimental jazz vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, producer, and Fulbright scholar. Known mostly for her virtuosic singing with saxophonist and 2014 MacArthur Genius Fellow Steve Coleman since 2003 and having collaborated with innovators Anthony Braxton, Bobby Previte, Chris Potter, Michael Formanek, and David Binney to name a few, she has performed her own music around the world in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin Museum of Art, Ringling International Arts Festival, Asia Society, Roulette, Blue Note, Bimhuis, Salihara Theater, National Gugak Center, and National Theater of Korea and festivals around the world.

A Stanford University graduate in opera with classical violin and ballet training, Jen had already won many piano competitions and played the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in Bb Minor, 3rd Movement, with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra by the age of 13. She has also studied traditional music and dance in Cuba, Taiwan, Brazil, China, South Korea, East Timor, and Indonesia, extensive research which in 2014 culminated into Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, directed by renowned Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho. Shyu has won commissions and support from the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards (2016 Doris Duke Artist Award and 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award), MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works, New Music USA, Jazz Gallery, and Roulette, as well as fellowships from Asian Cultural Council, Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Korean Ministry of Sports, Culture, and Tourism.

Jen has produced six albums as a leader, including Synastry (Pi, 2011) with co- bandleader and bassist Mark Dresser, which made her the first female artist and vocalist as bandleader on Pi Recordings; and most recently the critically acclaimed album Sounds and Cries of the World (Pi, 2015), which landed on many “Top 10 Best Albums of 2015” lists, including the New York Times and The Nation. It features her band Jade Tongue currently comprised of trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, violist Mat Maneri, bassist Thomas Morgan, and drummer Dan Weiss. Ben Ratliff of the New York Times calls it her “latest and best album” as well as calling 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.” Larry Blumenfeld writes in the Wall Street Journal, “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.”

Jen is currently based in New York City, touring with Jade Tongue and performing Solo Rites: Seven Breaths in the US and abroad. In March 2016, she premiered Song of Silver Geese, a multilingual, ritual music drama composed for her band Jade Tongue, dancer Satoshi Haga, and Mivos Quartet at Roulette. She is currently working on this and her next solo work, which will result in a United States 50-state “Songs of the World Now (SOWN)” tour in collaboration again with director Garin Nugroho.

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“I suppose there have been other people like JEN SHYU: disciplined vocalists who speak and sing in multiple languages, work with improvisation and composition and movement, feel at home both with quick-change rhythmic patterns and meditative long tones, use narrative poetry as a basis for songs, and use a two- stringed Taiwanese moon lute in a New Yorkish and vanguardish jazz context. I just can't think of any right now.”

“Instead of thinking about her categorically, you can focus on how beautifully and generously she uses sound.” - Ben Ratliff, NY Times (Read HERE)

“Ms

“Instead of thinking about her categorically, you can focus on how beautifully and generously she uses sound.” - Ben Ratliff, NY Times (Read HERE)

“Ms. Shyu is among New York's most invigorating vocal presences. And perhaps the most enigmatic.” - Larry Blumenfeld, Wall Street Journal (Read HERE)

“The singer Jen Shyu, singing parts of her piece “Solo Rites: Seven Breaths” in Korean and English, playing various lutes and zithers and percussion instruments, combined movement, acting, singing, and playing into long-form songs that could remind you of ancient court music or Joni Mitchell. Everything she did — every turn, every breath — came with mindful emphasis.” – Ben Ratliff, NY Times, on Solo Rites: Seven Breaths at Winter Jazz Fest, 2015 (Read HERE)

“Her voice was remarkable, moving from a whispering, almost silent, call to a wailing goddess, and then into a straight singing and dancing spirit.” – Ken Vermes, Jazz Police, on Solo Rites: Seven Breaths at Center for New Music, 2015 (Read HERE)

“The vocalist’s control is remarkable, weaving odd serpentines from low, guttural plunges to the crystalline shimmer of “Kind Of Nine.”” –Shaun Brady, Downbeat Magazine, on Pi Recordings’ Synastry with Mark Dresser, 2011 (Read HERE)

“Shyu is a remarkable phenomenon, shifting registers with startling ease and tonal resourcefulness, moving from conventional pitching to a yodel-like ambiguity without fuss. She blends fragile, light sounds with dark, low notes, ruminative hummings and improv in a personal language that fuses English, Taiwanese, Mandarin and several others.” – John Fordham, The Guardian, on Synastry, 2011 (Read HERE)

“Shyu matches their [David Binney, Shane Endsley, Dan Weiss] virtuosity and sings with palpable nerve, her enunciation of Chinese an outflow of unpredictable timbres….It's a remarkable achievement, with rich theatrical implications for the concert setting.” – David Adler, Time Out, on Jade Tongue, 2009 (Read HERE)

“Shyu deftly integrates ethnographical research with innovative new musical structures, producing work that is both cerebral and visceral.” – Wilbur Mackenzie, All About Jazz, on Jade Tongue, 2009 (Read HERE)

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