CITY ANIMALS / Y El Coche Se Murio. Viaje. Feet Dance. Poncho Song. City Animals. KuaFu: I. Rising; II. Starry, Starry Night; III. Parallel Chasing. Tutu & D. Party 2 A.M. (Yuhan Su) / Yuhan Su, vib; Matt Holman, tp/fl-hn; Alex LoRe, a-sax; Petros Klampanis, bs; Nathan Ellman-Bell, dm / Sunnyside Communications SSC 1529
A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN / Amulet. Valedicere I-III. No.13 Waltz. All Kinds Of Dreams. I Do Not Always Understand What You Say. What Is, Is By Its Nature On Display I & II. Painter’s Mind. Freezing Point. Anti-Hunger Song (Yuhan Su) / Yuhan Su, vib/voc; Matt Holman, tp/fl-hn; Kenji Herbert, gt/voc (#7); Petros Klampanis, bs; Nathan Ellman-Bell, dm / Inner Circle Music INCM 053CD
LIBERATED GESTURE / Hi-Tech Pros and Cons. Character. Naked Swimmer. Didion. She Goes to a Silent War.* Siren Days. Liberated Gesture II. Arc; III. Tightrope Walk; IV. Hartung’s Light. Hassan’s Fashion Magazine+ (Yuhan Su) / Yuhan Su, vib; Matt Mitchell, pno; Caroline Davis, a-sax;*reader; Marty Kenney, bs/+el-bs; Dan Weiss, dm / Sunnyside Communications SSC-1717
While writing my Cal Tjader review, I looked up contemporary vibes players online and ran across the name of Yuhan Su. Like so many women in the arts, she is very skillful at hiding her age and her background prior to attending the Berklee College of Music in 2008, but one can trace her growth as a writer and performer through her recordings, which are what I will be discussing here.
Like so many of the products of jazz colleges, Su apparently emerged from her studies as a pretty routine composer-performer. Her first album, Flying Alone, came out during her freshman year at Berklee and is nothing special; in fact, it’s not even very interesting. It consists of the soft, mushy style of music which I refer to as “ambient jazz” and has nothing either distinctive or interesting in it. It’s just musical wallpaper.
Yet a decade later, in 2018, she released City Animals on the Sunnyside label to great acclaim and was hailed as a rising young star in the jazz world. Upon sampling this CD, I was astonished by the complexity and energy of her music as well as its emotional depth. She certainly changed her musical viewpoint.
Intrigued, I then listener to the CD just prior to City Animals as well as the one after it, which was just released last month. This trio of album make an interesting study, I think, thus I decided to review all three of them starting with City Animals.
The liner notes for this CD reveal some interesting facts and insights into Su—for instance, that she came from the world of classical music into jazz. That explains the banal, soft0grained quality of her first album, since vibes are almost always used in classical music to create a soothing atmosphere, never to jump and swing like Lionel Hampton or Terry Gibbs. Moreover, the kind of classical music that includes vibes is almost never edgy, but when Su moved from Boston to New York City, she apparently got a wake-up call:
With a menagerie of people intermingling in seemingly never-ceasing action, the City has ecosystems within ecosystems. Vibraphonist/composer Yuhan Su has been inspired by her chaotic new home and her experiences with the individuals she has met there. Her new recording, City Animals, captures her enthusiasm for the craziness of the City and the adventures she has had since her arrival.
I can relate to what was said in this paragraph. As one who grew up in northern New Jersey, a mere 18 miles from New York City, I had access to its craziness by bus before I was old enough to drive and then by car afterward. My northern New Jersey neighborhood was calm, peaceful and even rustic: we were surrounded by woods and parks, which of course contained wildlife but controlled wildlife. All of the predatory animals were removed, leaving only the tamer, gentler species. By contrast, New York really was the “asphalt jungle,” a city so crowded that even driving in it somehow seemed like running a demolition derby on a daily basis…but when you live so close to it you get used to it. IT was initially a challenge to “run the jungle” and survive. later almost a sort of real-life game. But I learned how to negotiate my way with relative safety, particularly once I had a car, and stayed away from the most notorious and violent neighborhoods. And, like jazz singer Lorraine Feather, I can boast that I know the way to Brooklyn (or at least I did, more than a half-century ago). SO I know first hand how she felt.
And there is further insight into the way she approached her composing style in this album:
Her decision to have the vibes as the only harmonic instrument freed up the group’s sound, enabling a stripping down to single voices or a wide harmonic spectrum. Su’s music continues to blend elements of modern jazz and contemporary classical into a texturally rich and dynamic fusion, while always maintaining a groove. Having wanted to be a novelist as a child, Su is a natural storyteller who uses words to remember feelings that will drive compositions inspired by experiences and stories that she has grown fond of.
The program begins with “Y El Coche Se Murió,” a dramatic piece that interprets Su’s nerves when her band’s van broke down en route to a gig in Spain, the van’s pace echoed by an insistent pulse that dies out leaving the musicians to their own devices.
Thus the edginess of New York life and its inherent dangers (I wonder if she has tried driving on the West Side Highway yet…or if the West Side Highway is still a fairly continuous series of potholes with intermittent stretches of hole-free roadway?) took Su out of her comfort zone and put her in the midst of gritty reality, and it is this gritty reality that made her an interesting and arresting jazz artist and hot just a “musical wallpaper” writer-performer.
The first track, “Y El Coche Se Murio” (“And the Car Died”), opens with Su playing sole vibes in the key of F but with interesting excursions outside of that tonality before climbing and descending a chromatic ladder, eventually arriving back to the home key for an ostinato figure played underneath the horns’ theme statement—energetic at first, but then somewhat lachrymose (yet, ironically, more lyrical) as the tempo slows a bit. The trumpet falls away, leaving only the alto sax to play a somewhat free-form solo supported by bass and drums. Slowly, the tempo increases again as Su re-enters the picture, more like someone playing piano underpinning than the vibes as a dominant solo instrument. Alex LoRe’s solo becomes increasingly complex, almost edgy, but although Su’s ensuing vibes solo is also somewhat complex, it sounds a little more as if she is searching for something—perhaps a resolution to the dead car, or a way of solving the problem—yet as in the case of all really good music, it is not the title or the underlying motivation for the piece that captures one’s attention but the evolving musc, which suddenly begins to swing—and yes, I mean really swing—although this, too, shifts gears back to a somewhat slower pace and an ostinato beat with Su playing repeated E-flats beneath the horns’ final denouement.
“Viaje” opens with trumpet and alto playing contrapuntal atonal figures against one another, into which the vibes enter, the lower register paying a drone figure while the upper sprinkles notes here and there in the mix as the rhythm section comes in. The underlying beat is regular but unusual, a sort of 1 -2, 1 -2, 123 123 repeated for several bars before moving into what sounds like a Henry Threadgill-like use of one beat at a time. Again, it is the playing of the horns that arrest one’s attention most; Su’s decision to make the vibes an instrument of support and occasional commentary on the ongoing musical activities is intriguing. One would scarcely think that she was the leader of this group, but it is her willingness to subjugate herself into the ensemble that makes it all so interesting. The almost francitc musical activity slows down as the bass plays insistently repeated D-flats as drums accompany him, followed by Su playing a repeated rhythmic figure with commentary in the breaks by trumpet and alto sax. But this is music that is consistently changing and challenging the listener. Yes, some of it is pre-written and some of it is improvised, but the bottom line is that the whole thing works within its own rules of order. It may be a bit schizophrenic, but it is far from chaotic. There is order underlying its surface madness.
Interestingly, Feet Dance follows a sort of combination soft rock and soft Latin rhythm. Although Su’s melodic lines are amorphic and not conventionally melodic, her music suggests a melodic contour because of its wonderful musical flow. These pieces are always going somewhere; even at the end, they never quite arrive at their apparent destination, and it is this continual feeling of being on a journey that holds one’s attention fast. (Zen masters and other philosophers always say that the journey is the real event, arriving at a destination the end of the real adventure.) Little or nothing in any of these pieces is either predictable or conventional in comparison to almost any other modern jazz I’ve heard. It is, as I suggested early on, a form of true art, internalizing Su’s adventures in real life and real time and then distilling them into works of art that at least suggest her moods.
The notes tell us that Poncho Song “captures her appreciation for the approach of piano legend Bill Evans,” and that is true to a point, but since Su plays the vibes here in single-note lines the harmonic shifts are merely suggested, never quite stated until later when she adds a few chords while underpinning the horns. This piece supposedly captures the “noisy yet grooving experience of living in the city,” but in toto it’s a surprisingly gentle piece. No so the title track, where the inherent confusion of city life is perfectly captured by the hectic, relatively free-form and constantly shifting contours of the music.
The KuaFu Suite was written based on a Chinese folk tale about a giant who chases the sun, only to exhaust himself, try to revive himself by drinking a lake and, finally, dying with his goal unrealized, thus creating mountains and valleys. Although an image far from city life, Su viewed it as an analogy to driving one’s self crazy by running around trying to do too much at once. It is divided into the classical tripartite form although the first, “Rising,” begins quite slowly, setting the stage for the giant’s awakening before he starts running around, while the second, titled “Starry, Starry Night,” I felt was an analogy to Van Gogh’s famous painting. There is a sort of simplicity about this music that harks back to her earlier output but still has more energy as well as a more interesting structure. Matt Holman’s lengthy flugelhorn solo in the first section dominated the proceedings, although Su followed this with a relatively long solo of her own. As an improviser, I noted that she is often more rhythmic than melodic, which I found somewhat surprising considering that she is the composer of this essentially lyrical music.
In “Starry, Starry Night,” Su uses reverb and wah-wah effects on her vibes, not consistently but intermittently. This piece has almost no set pulse to speak of; the bass and drums play behind her almost as if at random, although the melodic line played together (in harmony) by the two horns has a haunting quality about it. LoRe’s alto solo is surprisingly plaintive, almost Paul Desmond-like in both tone and style, a far cry from his usual busy style. Again, this is an instance of a performer modifying his style to fit the contours of a different kind of piece without sounding maudlin, and this, too was a shift from Su’s earlier style. There’s a wonderful flow to this piece in both its musical form and its execution in the jazz sense that makes wonderful sense; even thr double-time interweaving of the horns in the penultimate chorus (followed by Su and the rhythm section in a fade-out) makes sense.
The underlying feeling of menace in the third section is undercut somewhat by the theme, which almost sounds more quizzical and wondering than menacing—although, as it progresses, there is a feeling of uneasy confusion, not in the notes played by the soloists so much as in the evolving, more chaotic development section and the every-man-and-women for themselves feeling of the solos. It is primarily in the roiling bass and drums that one feels the growing tension.
“Tutu & D” is a ballad that harks back to Su’s earlier style, although it has more form and is actually a pretty interesting melodic line. The notes tell us it was inspired by the Dalai Lama (D) and Desmond Tutu, but nice thing is that the music can stand on its own. Holman and Su are the principal solo voices on this one, the latter ins a very short solo, sculpting exquisite lines as Su and the rhythm section supports them. The album ends with “Party 2 A.M.,” which opens with the vibist before Holman and LoRe play contrapuntal, atonal, intertwining lines prior to the solos. All in all, an excellent album, interesting from start to finish.
The pre-“City Animals” album
A Room of One’s Own came out in 2018. It was the second of her two recordings for Inner Circle Music and did not arouse as much enthusiasm or attention, yet although the music is not as consistently good one can hear indications of her later style. The opener, “Amulet,” is actually a pretty nice ballad with a good form. Holman is also the trumpeter on this album, and his solos are consistently interesting; the uneven rhythmic base also provides interest, and the rhythm section, here including a guitar and with a different but equally capable bassist and drummer, do a good job of holding one’s interest. The slightly more energetic volume and tempo at the end of Holman’s solo also creates some nice tension. As a soloist, Su is more interesting here than in Flying Alone; she is already moving towards the style one hears in City Animals, although several of the pieces presented here are not quite on the high level of her later work. This is especially evident in “No. 13 Waltz” and “All Kinds of Dreams.” The three-part suite Valedicere also moves in the direction of here later work and has some interesting moments, particularly in the tension created between Holman and the rhythm section. She was already starting to grow out of her “ambient jazz” style by this time, learning how to pace and shape some of her compositions in a more interesting manner. Note, for instance, the nice use of contrapuntal lines and a more aggressive beat in the second movement of this suite…but then, she suddenly reverts to her earlier style in the largely comforting yet uninteresting last movement. From this point on, the only piece that really grabbed my attention was Freezing Point, a piece in shifting meters with a fascinating bass line underpinning played by Petros Kampanis—and, once again, some brilliant playing by Holman on trumpet—but the electric guitar solo by Kenji Herbert did nothing at all for me, being too musically unfocused. It was also far too long, and thus spoiled the entire track for me.
Liberated Gesture
The jump from A Room of One’s Own to Liberated Gesture would be inconceivable without City Animals in between; it’s like moving from Alexander Scriabin’s earlier, Chopin-influenced piano sonatas to the “Black Mass” Sonata. Part of this, I’m sure, is due to the fact that Su has been playing with this specific combination of musicians since 2021 when she formed this quintet and named it “Liberated Gesture.” Caroline Davis is the new solo horn voice on alto saxophone; she combines many of the qualities that both Holman and LoRe brought to City Animals; and the rhythm section now also includes a pianist, Matt Mitchell, whose rhythmically taut and aggressive style fits Su’s new aesthetic perfectly.
If anything, in fact, there is an even greater drive and energy in this album than in its predecessor and, at the same time, Su subjugates her vibes playing even more than in the previous albums, making herself an almost as aggressive member of the rhythm section, soloing less and driving hard behind both the ensemble and Davis’ solos. When she does solo, as on “Character,” she now has the real jazz-like edge of the vibes firmly in mind. This group has, in my view, focused her talents further away from the soft-classical bias of her first two albums into something even more arresting and interesting. She splits the rhythm here in a masterful style, aggressively taking charge of her solos and no longer hanging back or just trying to “fill in.” The notes posted on the Bandcamp page for this album put it best:
There’s a vein of polyrhythmic complexity and dissonance coursing through the album, “a kind of writing with complex meters and improvising over atonal harmony on specific form,” Su remarks of her piece “Character.” The goal, she adds, is “to find liberation from within given limitations.”
Mitchell’s solo on “Character” is utterly stunning, combining elements of Herbie Hancock, late-period Mary Lou Williams (a far more innovative pianist in the 1970s than many people remember) and even a touch of the avant-garde, yet neither he nor the others ever completely lose touch with the strong if irregular beat underlying this music. Somehow, Su’s compositional style has managed to evolve along with this new harder edge without losing its basic character, and this is even true in a ballad such as “Naked Swimmer.” But can you really call this piece a “ballad”? Granted, it’s a very slow piece, dominated in its early going by Mitchell, who plays a “spacey” succession of chords that somehow coalesce into a theme, but the overall feeling is one of mystery rather than easy comfort. Even when Mitchell moves into a repeated motif, under which bassist Marty Kenney plays an extremely interesting, complex and ever-evolving solo, one’s attention is held fast by the feeling that something else is going to happen and the only question is when, not if. This is improvised music on the highest level of art, and I’m certain that it was Su’s move to New York and the subsequent events following the writing and recording of City Animals that helped her forge these new tonal experiments. Some of this music reminds me of the Chick Corea-Gary Burton Lyric Suite for Sextet, but it even goes beyond that. It is virtually a new form of music, a true fusion of classical principles with jazz form and improvisation.
Caroline Davis
Listen, for instance, to “Didion” with its brilliant piano solo, so much like the flowing of a rushing river that even the fine support of the bass and drums seems almost superfluous, and into which Davis’ alto comes flying in, partly to tame the savage beast while adding commentary of her own. There is an exceptional musical unity going on here, a development of Mitchell’s piano statement while at the same time modifying it. Davis is, quixotically, both more lyrical and more rhythmically percussive than Mitchell. Her playing takes us into musical realms suggested by Mitchell but not quite attained by him, and the pianist himself stays with her, eventually morphing into the role of accompanist. The only weak spot in this album is the surrealist “poem” recited by Davis on “She Goes to a Silent War.” I had a difficult time trying to decode what this poem meant, and whether intentional or not, Davis sounds as if she is laughing to herself as she recites it. Plus, the music is just “there,” it really doesn’t do much except for Davis’ excellent alto solo. She is, in my view, one of the three best female sax players in modern jazz, right behind Silke Eberhard and Catherine Sikora (neither of whose existence, by the way, Down Beat even acknowledges, let alone praises).
But the rest of the album is really out there. Mitchell opens “Siren Days” with some aggressive, Monk-styled chords, into which Davis jumps with some Charlie Rouse-styled commentary before the tempo shifts, eventually putting the stress on beats between the beats as the meter jumps around like a hyperactive frog on acid. When Su enters for her solo, however, she is right on the beat, letting the pianist continue to shift around the rhythmic accents in his own sweet way as the bass and drums roil beneath them. A bit later on, Mitchell and Davis engage in a duo-improvisation that must be heard to be believed, he contributing a fancy-trim frame filigree of notes around her stellar solo, before embarking on another Monk-like run of repeated chords as the drums improvise around him. Davis and Su come flying in at the end to ride it out. This is quite a track!
Interestingly, the Liberated Gesture Suite, though apparently comprising four movements, only gives us the last three on this CD. I don’t know if Su omitted the first movement due to time restraints—the CD does run a little over 72 minutes, and I don’t know how long the first movement is—or simply that she decided to edit the first movement out. Whichever the case, the second movement begins quite slowly and stays that way until 3/4 of the way through, when Su’s vibes solo energizes the atmosphere along with roiling bass and drums with Mitchell playing subtle, thoughtful fills on piano before embarking on a gentle but interesting solo of his own. In this way, Su manages to optimize a fairly minimalist theme, holding the listener’s interest. The third movement opens with a drum solo focusing on the bass and tom-toms; Dan Weiss doesn’t reveal a particularly virtuosic technique, but he is tasteful and musical. After the bass enters, so too does Mitchell, again in a bit of a Monk-ish mood, with Su following him with an inventive and energetic solo. The synergy is this group is evident on every track, but perhaps nowhere so much as here, where every little shift in rhythm or accent seems to have a profound if subtle effect on the ongoing musical discourse. The final movement, to my ears, sounds more like a separate piece of music unrelated to its predecessors; it’s more like an independent tune, and although it’s not a memorable one it grows on one. There’s an elusive quality in the piano and bass solos, almost as f they were trying to communicate something by half-gestures rather than fully formed statements, although Mitchell’s last chorus has more meat on its bones. Su fills in nicely, if also somewhat minimally, in the penultimate chorus.
Interestingly, Davis sits this suite out, as she also does on the last track, “Hassan’s Fashion Magazine.” Here Kenney switches to electric bass, but he plays it tastefully, and Su surprises one with the funky beat underlying this largely bitonal piece. It’s a quirky end to a mostly brilliant album, but I like quirky!
Thus we can trace Yuhan Su’s growth as both a composer and an improviser from her early days at Berklee to the present. It’s been quite a journey, both in terms of her own playing her composition abilities, but if she continues on the path she is now on I predict that she will soon become one of jazz’s most interesting modern figures, someone who is forging a path into quite new realms. I wish her luck, and you should, too.
—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley
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Again, the list of honorees is down from the previous year, but not because I didn’t care for most of what I reviewed this year. I just decided to choose the recordings I felt were the most important released during the year, and that automatically reduced the number of winners from 23 last year to 10 this year.
CHAMBER WORKS / A Presto (Potsa Lotsa Sextet). The Fink Panther. All Alone 1.* Dirty Glasses. Light Light Blue. Mochokidae. Cyprinidae. Dusty Glasses. All Alone 2* (Eberhard) / Silke Eberhanrd, a-sax & Potsa Lotsa: Nikolaus Neuser, tp; Gerhard Gschlöβl, tb; Johannes Fink, vc; Taiko Saito, vib; Igor Spallab, bs. *Add Jürgen Kupke, cl; Patrick Braun, t-sax; Antonis Anissegos, pno; Kay Lübke, dm / Trouble in the East Records 031
FIRE WITHIN / Fire Within. Inferred. Angular Logic. Through Still Air. Following the Stream (Halley-Shipp-Bisio-Taylor Baker) / Rick Halley, t-sax; Matthew Shipp, pno; Michael Bisio, bs; Newman Taylor Baker, dm / Pine Eagle Records 015, also available for free streaming 
Eventually, according to Norman Lebrecht’s obituary on his Slipped Disc website, Decca Records producer Tony D’Amato “signed him after hearing a concert in Brussels to record for the snazzy Phase4 sonic brand. His debut with Wagner orchestral pieces became a demonstration record.” But it did more than that. It won Païta the first of his three Grand Prix du Disque awards and garnered a very enthusiastic review from Irving Kolodin in Stereo Review, who wrote that “this recording of the Tristan Prelude and Love-Death is the best to be heard in years, on a plane of musical perfection and emotional eloquence rarely heard since the passing of Furtwängler, Knappertsbusch, Beecham and . . . Toscanini.”
But Berlioz is neither Beethoven nor Brahms. He was a hyper-emotional Frenchman who, though inspired by Beethoven, took his music in an entirely different direction, and “careening tempo changes” are not out of place in his music. I would suggest that Mr. Pincus, if he is still with us, listen to Pierre Monteux’s first recording of this symphony (from 1930) in which he used a score marked up by his old boss, Édouard Colonne. Colonne made these marks regarding tempi and accents while listening to a performance conducted by the composer himself in the early 1860s. It, too, has some “careening speeds” and is unlike anyone else’s recording. And then there are the live performances and early mono recording made by Charles Munch, whose knowledge of and love for Berlioz’ music has been unquestioned for more than 70 years. I think the problem was that, when this article was written, Colin Davis’ surprisingly sedate reading of the score was then considered the ne plus ultra of Symphonie Fantastiques, leaving the more intense performances by Monteux, Munch and Leonard Bernstein in the lurch.
I am not necessarily willing to declare Païta an ascendant genius whose every whim worked. I’m still not very fond of his Beethoven and Brahms myself, but a Furtwängler-like reading of the Tchaikovsky Sixth is neither without precedent nor too far from the mark/ In fact, it was the German conductor’s 1940 recording of this piece that so impressed Arturo Toscanini that he began conducting it himself. Although it was only his very last performance of this symphony (1954) that had some of the tempo relaxation of Furtwängler, all of his performances and recordings of this work mirror the German’s reading in terms of emotional stress and emphasis. Païta’s performance is, in fact, a bit less mannered than Furtwängler’s, but possesses the intensity of his twin idols. If some modern conductor were to produce a recording anywhere near as intense and deeply felt as this—which almost none today can even if they tried—it would be deemed an instant classic. Certainly, except for the brilliant flash of light that is the third movement, this is the most deeply felt and least superficial of all of Tchaikovsky’s numbered symphonies. (The Manfred, which I wish Païta had recorded, is a close second.)
One reason critics cite as proof of Païta’s ego-driven promotion of himself is the 1978 live Prague performance of Berlioz’ Romeo et Juliette. This, of course, was never performed by Furtwängler, but it was performed, and recorded, by Toscanini. one of the Italian maestro’s finest readings. Païta’s is just as good, not only in the way he paces and shapes the score but also in his choice of singers; the tenor, mezzo-soprano and bass are excellent. But their names are lost to history. When this recording was reissued around 2006, I reviewed it for a major classical music magazine, but couldn’t figure out why the singers’ names were left off it, so I contacted Païta’s agent via email. He wrote back that, unfortunately, Maestro Païta couldn’t remember who the soloists were, and for some reason the Czechs who taped the performance failed to put their names on or in the tape box. Although I can understand how this happened, one would think that since it was a live performance, someone in the Czech Republic would have a program in which the singers were identified, but perhaps not. Sometimes Eastern Europeans can be as slovenly in terms of documentation as the French or Italians. According to a May 7, 1978 article in the New York Times by Vernon Kidd regarding European music festivals for that year, the date of this performance was between May 12 and June 4. The famous Russian mezzo Elena Obraztsova is listed as one of the famous soloists appearing; she might or might not be the mezzo on this recording. The orchestra could be one of several listed: the Czech Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic, or the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony. Since this is one Païta great performance that is not available even in part on YouTube, I’ve done my readers a favor by uploading MP3 files of it onto the Internet Archive. You can listen to it 
THE ART MUSIC LOUNGE 