Jason Kao Hwang – Sunday Interview

Photo by Peter Gannushskin

1.  What is your greatest joy in improvised music?

   When musicians
   hear each other deeply, exchanging essential energies, faster than cognition
   and more deeply than emotions, to ultimately unify within a consciousness of
   truth, even for a fleeting moment, is a great joy and inspiration.

2. What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?

   Musicians with the imagination to discover their individualism,
   which opens the expression of soul.

3. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?

   There
   are too many artists that I love equally. John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman,
   Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Jeff Beck, Keith Jarrett, Borah Bergman, and
   Cecil Taylor, are a few examples.

4. If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?

   Borah Bergman. Though we played many sessions at his place, we
   never recorded. I wish we did. Borah is a great original who was a true
   friend.

5. What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?

   I
   will strive to grow my creativity and skills as composer, violinist, and
   violist.

6. Are you interested in popular music and – if yes – what music/artist do you
   particularly like?

   I don’t listen to much pop music…I like
   Taylor Swift when she sings just with her guitar or piano, not in the pop
   arrangements that diminish her lyrics… Brittany Howard is great. Going back,
   Queen, James Brown, Aretha Franklin.

7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

   I am grateful for who I am, a person with strengths and flaws. The
   strengths could not exist without the flaws.

8. Which of your albums are you most proud of?

   Soliloquies,
   Human Rites Trio, Critical Response, and
   Uncharted Faith are my most recent recordings. I am proud of all of
   them. I’m in my prime now.

9. Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how
   often?

   In the process of mixing my own recordings, I listen to a
   track hundreds of times. Once the CD is released, I rarely listen again.

10. Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?

    No single album comes to mind. But, I do listen to the work of
    my favorite artists that I listed above.

11. What are you listening to at the moment?

    William Parker’s and
    Ellen Christi’s brilliant Cereal Music. Memoir, poetry, and social
    critique interwoven magically within WP’s inimitable storytelling. Ellen’s
    glorious voice. Evocative sound design and music casts a spell. Also, box
    sets of Monk and Dolphy.

12. What artist outside music inspires you?

    Right now, the poetry of
    Bob Holman and Patricia Spears Jones. 

 Jason Kao Hwang on the Free Jazz Blog:

• Joëlle Léandre Celebrates Her Rebellious Music with Old and New Friends

• William Parker – Universal Tonality (Centering Records/AUM Fidelity,
  2022)
• Matsumoto / Shiroishi / Watanabe – Yellow (Dinzu Artefacts, 2022)
• Vision Festival 2022: Lasting Impressions
• Patrick Shiroishi – Hidemi (American Dreams, 2021) ****½
• William Parker – Migration of Silence Into and Out Of the Tone World
  (Centering, 2021) ****
• Daniel Bernardes & Drumming GP – Liturgy of the Birds: In Memoriam
  Olivier Messiaen (Clean Feed, 2020) ****
• Vision Festival #24 2019 – Day 6
• Vision Festival #24 2019 – Day 3
• William Parker – Voices Fall from the Sky (Centering, 2018) ****
• Vision Festival #23 2018 – Day 4
• Vision Festival #23 2018 – Day 3
• Jason Kao Hwang – Sing House (Euonymus Records, 2017) ****
• Vision Festival 2017 – Day 3: Pause and Reflection
• Taylor Ho Bynum – Enter the Plustet (Firehouse 12, 2016) *****
• ROVA Channeling Coltrane – Electric Ascension Live (RogueArt, 2016)
  *****
• William Hooker – Heart Of The Sun (Engine, 2014) ***
• World jazz with influences from the Middle-East
• Commitment – The Complete Recordings 1981/1983 (No Business, 2010) ****
• Rozanne Levine – Only Moment (Acoustics, 2009) ***½
• William Parker – Double Sunrise Over Neptune (AUM Fidelity, 2008) *****
• Jason Kao Hwang’s Edge – Stories Before Within (Innova, 2008) ****
• Jason Kao Hwang – Edge (Asian Improv Records, 2006) ****½
• Ravish Momin’s Trio Tarana – Miren (Clean Feed, 2007) ****

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