Jen Shyu: Sounds & Cries of the World

Pi Recordings CD release

With “songs that could remind you of ancient court music or Joni Mitchell” (Ben Ratliff, NY Times), Doris Duke Impact Award recipient, vocalist Jen Shyu invites you on a musical pilgrimage through Taiwan, East Timor, Indonesia, (Bali, Kalimantan), South Korea and beyond. This night celebrates the release of Sounds and Cries of the World on the groundbreaking record label Pi Recordings, as Jen’s first album since returning from her 3-year research journey throughout those lands.

Incomparable artists Mat Maneri on viola, Dan Weiss on drums, and dancer Satoshi Haga will join Jen in an opening invocation, moving into her solo music drama Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, directed by renowned Indonesian filmmaker, Garin Nugroho. In this seminal work, Shyu employs lutes, zithers, poetry, and dance to reveal a land-sound-scape which will serve to transport and transform both performer and audience, leading to shared revelation and recovery from past sorrow.

“Shyu is a remarkable phenomenon, shifting registers with startling ease and tonal resourcefulness”¦” ““ John Fordham, The Guardian

“”¦ among New York’s most invigorating vocal presences. And perhaps the most enigmatic.” ““ Larry Blumenfeld, The Wall Street Journal

About the Musician

Jen Shyu is an experimental jazz vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, producer, and Fulbright scholar. Having sung with Steve Coleman and Five Elements since 2003 and also in Anthony Braxton’s operas Trillium E and Trillium J, she has produced six albums, two of which have been released by Pi Recordings (Synastry with bassist Mark Dresser in 2011 and Sounds and Cries of the World in 2015). She has presented her own music at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Jazz Gallery, Blue Note, Bimhuis (Amsterdam), Salihara (Jakarta), and next year in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, to name a few. A Stanford University graduate known for researching lesser known traditional musics in Taiwan, China, Korea, East Timor, Shyu studied Javanese sindhenan and dance for two years on a Fulbright in Indonesia, culminating in Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, directed by Garin Nugroho, which premiered at Roulette Intermedium (Brooklyn, NY, 2014). She is currently performing Sounds and Cries of the World CD release performances with Solo Rites: Seven Breaths as well as with her ensemble Jade Tongue in the US and abroad.