Curation Window
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Curations by:
The Matrix ℵ
Who I Am & Where I Live
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Name:
Cuong Vu
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City:
New York City
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
Saigon, Vietnam
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Cuong Vu is widely recognized by jazz critics as a leader of a generation of innovative musicians. A truly unique musical voice, Cuong has lent his trumpet playing talents to a wide range of artists including Pat Metheny, Laurie Anderson, and David Bowie.
As a youngster, Cuong’s intense dedication and love for music led him to a full scholarship at the New England Conservatory of Music where he received his Bachelor of Music in Jazz studies with a distinction in performance. Transitioning from his studies in Boston, he moved to New York in 1994 and began his career actively leading various groups while touring extensively throughout the world. As a leader, Cuong has released recordings that consistently make critics’ lists of the best recordings of their respective years. Each record displays how he has carved out a distinctive sonic territory on the trumpet, blurring all stylistic borders while developing his own compositional aesthetic.
Awards and honors that Cuong has garnered include grants from the Royalty Research Foundation, ArtistTrust, 4Culture, CityArts and the Colbert Award for Excellence. As professor and chair of Jazz Studies at the University of Washington, Cuong was awarded the Donald E. Peterson Professorship and the University’s prestigious Distinguished Teacher Award. In 2002 and 2006, Cuong was a recipient of the Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album as a member of the Pat Metheny Group. He’s been recognized as one of the top 50 young Jazz Artists in an article called “The New Masters” from the British magazine, “Classic CD” and in 2006 was named the Best International Jazz Artist by the Italian Jazz Critics’ Society. Amazon listed Vu’s “Come Play With Me” on their “The 100 Greatest Jazz Albums of All Time”. Most recently, Cuong received Europe’s Echo Jazz Awards – International Instrumentalist for his work on his recording, “Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny”.
Contact Information
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Email:
jackhousemusic@cuongvu.com
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Vu composes and plays a kind of music that is both jazz and not-jazz, post-rock without the pretention, metal without the cookie monster voice. Whatever it is, it’s brilliant…but it’s going to take me the whole review to explain what it sounds like. Because the problem is that Cuong Vu hates jazz. Of course, he also loves it. This ambiguity is how we get our best music. It’s fair to say that this is pretty freakin’ great.
- Matt Cibula, popmatters.com
Listeners coming from jazz won’t feel lost. Plenty of the genre’s current obsessions are here: odd-meter rhythm patterns, slow soloing over fast rhythms (vice versa too), and a kind of bucolic lyricism…the point of Mr. Vu’s music, at its best, is just that: to make you feel lost in it.
– Ben Ratliff, NY Times
Vu carves out intricate melodies that are so immaculately crafted they almost feel simple, pure. In the end Vu’s music homes in on one dynamic sound: om.
– Sam Prestianni, Jazziz
Indeed, the blending of contemporary jazz and rock define the Vu-Tet as much as their material does. That the Vu-Tet is able to make so many disparate elements intersect at all, let alone with cohesion and vitality, speaks to Vu and the Band’s marvelous imagination.
– Michael J. West, JazzTimes
Cuong Vu has established a firm identity as a progressive futurist, steeped in the technoinfluenced cum electric contemporary sound…This is yet another tremendous effort for Cuong Vu, a distinct, unique stylist and soloist that is rising ever swiftly as one of the very best modern trumpet players on the improvised or jazz music scene.
- Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide
Vu's music is a living residue of journeys taken and journeys returned from, in sound. A sound picture-within-a-picture, filled with brimming memory and emotion, it bears the audible traces of a various human life - a life, lived today.
- David Fujino, www.thelivemusicreport.com
The first sounds you hear on Cuong Vu's new album are ethereal trumpet moans joined by equally otherworldly clusters of notes emanating from a guitar. These sounds herald the beginning of a musical marriage made in electronic heaven. I'm not sure if Vu is dealing in metaphor, but with music organized and chaotic, at once over-the-edge and strangely engaging, he's created an apt tone poem for the 21st century.
- Ron Netsky, Rochester City News
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Cuong Vu/ℵ A CURATED WINDOW UPON OTHER WORLDS