Many experimental musicians draw inspiration from multiple styles. Fewer make these excursions sound as fluid and natural as the composer and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu does. Most familiar to contemporary jazz audiences, thanks to her frequent presence as a bandleader and session player on the celebrated NYC-based jazz imprint Pi Recordings, Shyu’s work holds just as much appeal for fans of modern chamber composition. In live performance, she’s apt to incorporate a variety of dance traditions; the press release for her latest album cites Javanese shadow puppetry as a key influence. While madly diverse interests can make for a fascinating profile page, the trick for a composer is to make all those reference points cohere into something new.
Song of Silver Geese shows Shyu working at a high level. The nine-movement album is made up of selections from a longer stage show, and the recorded versions have plenty of dramatic movement. Over the course of the work, which is dedicated to two of Shyu’s recently deceased mentors, she employs a dizzying range of languages: English, Indonesian, Javanese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, Tetum Wehali, and Korean. During “Door 1: Prologue—Song of Lavan Pitinu,” she delivers a few lines that give a sense of the album’s funereal tinge: “I’m no longer able to recount in detail the story of my life/Now that it’s twilight and there is so much silence.”
At the same time, the supporting music reflects Shyu’s joyous performer’s sensibility. While plucking a spare and haunting motif on a string instrument, Shyu can also bring vivid variety into her vocal lines. Her straight-tone notes have a poise that communicates profound calm. And when her voice breaks, it does so with precision. After this, the introduction of vibrato can suggest a new sense of exploration. This all makes for subtle material, and yet Shyu’s way of navigating these slight changes feels fully alive, giving an extra emotional dimension to an otherwise mournful album.
Her instrumental writing for other players thrives on a similar sense of contrast. The Mivos String Quartet, guests from the avant-garde classical sphere, appear alongside the more jazz-like backing of performers who have worked with Shyu before, in her Jade Tongue ensemble. “Door 3: Dark Road, Silent Moon” is driven by the string ensemble, whose members seem to revel in the brief solo jaunts and ensemble dances that Shyu has scheduled in between passages flush with long, meditative tones.
A hint of jazz propulsion begins to emerge during “Door 5: World of Hengchun.” But Shyu is saving the real bash for the penultimate track, “Door 8: World of Baridegi.” During its most feverish passages, this track offers a concise experience of the qualities that make Shyu such a magnetic performer. Here, conceptual density and improvisational fire manage to complement, rather than obscure, her overall compositional design. There may never be a genre heading that can do justice to such a method. But that is no great loss. Shyu’s personal language—the product of singular study and many curiosities—can tell her story persuasively on its own.
