CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Jen Shyu
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
Peoria, Illinois
Life & Work
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Bio:
Jen Shyu ("Shyu" pronounced "Shoe" in English, Chinese name: 徐秋雁, Pinyin: Xúqiūyàn) is a groundbreaking, multilingual vocalist, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, 2019 United States Artists Fellow, 2016 Doris Duke Artist, and was voted 2017 Downbeat Critics Poll Rising Star Female Vocalist. Born in Peoria, Illinois, to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, Shyu is widely regarded for her virtuosic singing and riveting stage presence, carving out her own beyond-category space in the art world. She has performed with or sung the music of such musical innovators as Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Bobby Previte, Chris Potter, Michael Formanek and David Binney. Shyu has performed her own music on prestigious world stages such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin Museum of Art, Ojai Festival, Ringling International Arts Festival, Asia Society, Roulette, Blue Note, Bimhuis, Salihara Theater, National Gugak Center, National Theater of Korea and at festivals worldwide.
A Stanford University graduate in opera with classical violin and ballet training, Shyu had already won many piano competitions and performed the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto (3rd mvmt.) with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra by the age of 13. She speaks 10 languages and has studied traditional music and dance in Cuba, Taiwan, Brazil, China, South Korea, East Timor and Indonesia, conducting extensive research which culminated in her 2014 stage production Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, directed by renowned Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho. Shyu has won commissions and support from NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, MAP Fund, US-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship from Japan-US Friendship Commission and National Endowment for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works, Exploring the Metropolis, New Music USA, Jazz Gallery, and Roulette, as well as fellowships from the Fulbright Scholar Program, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Korean Ministry of Sports, Culture, and Tourism.
Shyu has produced seven albums as a leader, including the first female-led and vocalist-led album Pi Recordings has released, Synastry (Pi 2011), with co-bandleader and bassist Mark Dresser. Her critically acclaimed Sounds and Cries of the World (Pi 2015) landed on many best-of-2015 lists, including those of The New York Times, The Nation, and NPR. Her latest album Song of Silver Geese (Pi 2017) is receiving rave reviews and was also included on The New York Times’ Best Albums of 2017.
Even with the acclaim she has received for her recordings, Shyu is just as renowned for her dynamic performances. Ben Ratliff wrote in The New York Times that her concerts are "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." Her duo performance with Tyshawn Sorey was among The New York Times’ Best Live Jazz Performances of 2017. Larry Blumenfeld wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “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.”
Currently based in New York City, Shyu is on the Artistic Advisory Council of Roulette Intermedium and is a member of the We Have Voice Collective, which released its Code of Conduct for the Performing Arts on May 1, 2018. She premiered her latest solo work Nine Doors at National Sawdust June 29, 2017, kicking off a 50-state U.S. tour of “Songs of Our World Now / Songs Everyone Writes Now (SOWN/SEWN),” planting seeds of creativity and threading communities together through art and cultural exchange. Her next solo work, Zero Grasses, premieres October 30, 2019, at National Sawdust as part of John Zorn's Commissioning Series. Jen Shyu is a Steinway Artist.
Her current instruments in performance include piano, violin, Taiwanese moon lute (2 strings), Chinese er hu (2 strings), Japanese biwa (4 strings), Korean gayageum (12 strings), Korean soribuk (drum), and Korean gong called "ggwaenggwari."
Contact Information
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Management/Booking:
Worldwide General Management
Kanzen Arts, LLC
67-26 Exeter Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
Earl G. Blackburn, President
(917) 702-8403
[email protected]
Public Relations
Shuman Associates
850 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1006
New York, NY 10019
(212) 315-1300
Constance Shuman
[email protected]
Lisa Jaehnig
[email protected]
My Instruction
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Lessons/Workshops:
Jen Shyu is an internationally celebrated and groundbreaking educator in voice, composition, jazz, improvisation, multidisciplinary / intermedia arts, and ethnomusicology. She has taught workshops and lectured throughout the US and the world.* At the bottom of this page are some glowing reviews from students / participants from past workshops.
Jen customizes her workshops to the needs of the participants, whether they are advanced professional musicians, dancers, actors, university students, primary schoolers or high schoolers, parents with their children, or non-artists and non-musicians, or a mix of people with all various levels of musical or arts backgrounds.
Her most popular workshops are an "Intensive Ear and Rhythm Training" usually for advanced artists as well as her "You Are Everything: Intermedia Improvisation Workshop," which is usually for non-artists and audience members who want to tap into their creative sides, but is also transformative for advanced artists as well, and is often mixed with both artists and non-artists.
For musicians, these workshops give them new and valuable tools to approach improvisation, songwriting, composition, and/or research, covering all the tools one would need to create a multidisciplinary solo work, for example. The goals of this intermedia workshop are to encourage people to find freedom outside of their comfort zones and to bring people together from all different backgrounds and disciplines, inspiring everyone to fearlessly pursue their passions with the most personal, daring, and innovative approach.
Please contact Jen here (https://www.jenshyu.com/contact.html) if you'd like to invite her to lead a workshop or give a lecture / artist talk.
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Instruction:
http://www.mymusicmasterclass.com/premiumvideos/jen-shyu-improvisation-lesson-intervallic-improvisation-for-all/
Clips (more may be added)
Uncoiling from a vast Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian, cultural matrix...
EX TERRA BRASILIS
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Creators worldwide closely united by the graph-theoretical mathematics of...
The Small World Phenomenon
The creative universe becomes a creative village wherein all are within steps of all.
Inspired in the sensorial immanence of Borges' transfinites-inspired Alephs.
The Aleph / O Aleph
O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space...
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; recorded "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): World's premier klezmer violinist
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
Tap the grey crosses next to the categories on somebody's Matrix Page to recommend that person for that category.
(These crosses are only visible when you are logged in)
The crosses will turn green.
That person/category will appear in your My Curation & Recommendations.
You will appear in that person's Incoming Curation and Recommendations.
By the small world phenomenon (6 degrees of separation in the general population), you will not only be one step from the recommended person, you will tend to some small number of steps from everybody inside the Matrix.
All is closer than we imagine.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
Conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Thus A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until Sodré was silenced, threatened with death and forced into exile...
And thus a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
*Darius Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
Between 2000 and 2004 he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, Darius led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Darius was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and to restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Susan Rogers
Alicia Svigals
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
Darius Mans
Sparrow/Pardal Roberts
RÁDIO MATRIX