Liberated Gesture: Yuhan Su Speaks

Photo courtesy of the artist.

by Sarah Thomas

A native of Taiwan, vibraphonist Yuhan Su first came to the states to study at the Berklee College of Music in 2008. Now based in New York, Su has released 3 records on Sunnyside and Inner Circle recordings over the past decade. On Thursday, Su comes to The Jazz Gallery to present her new four movement suite, Liberated Gesture. Having recorded the suite in May 2022, it will soon be her fourth record as a leader.

We caught up with Yuhan to talk about writing with visual inspiration, how her writing has evolved since her last release, and other upcoming projects.

The Jazz Gallery: At The Jazz Gallery on October 27th you're performing your piece Liberated Gesture, which you wrote during your artist residency in Paris. Could you talk about how this piece came about and what your experience was writing it during your residency?

Yuhan Su: Like you said, this piece is a four movement suite I wrote during the residency in Paris [at Cité Internationale des Arts]. It's inspired by a German-French painter, Hans Hartung. He’s one of the most significant post-war painters that we know for his innovative and dramatic approach to abstractions. So in his ideal, his abstractions eliminated all figurative elements and he pursued the gestures of freedom and dynamism.

He had a very long career. Over seventy years, he kept creating new artwork and his style evolved to different things. He was always able to keep a renewed sense of energy and ambition throughout his career using non-traditional tools like spray guns and branches from olive trees. He lost his leg during the Second World War and was in a wheelchair, and even after that he found a way to create his paintings in a different style. 

I was very moved after visiting his lifetime achievement exhibition. Liberated Gesture is the title of this exhibition, and that really got me thinking about how to create gestures in music. With compositions, we write a certain group of notes or lines or rhythms. But I was thinking about how to make that in a bigger way, in a bigger direction—to let the musicians have this gesture towards an emotional quality, or certain ways to articulate the lines or approach the improvisation. So I think that's what I’m looking for in this suite.

TJG: Have you written other work inspired by visual artists before?

YS: I think this is the first time I’ve written for painting or visuals. But when I write, I usually have a specific image or color I want to approach.

TJG: So this is a slightly different type of inspiration. How has writing with a specific artist in mind who inspires you affected your process or how you’re thinking about sound?

YS: For the suite, I especially picked a few of his paintings in my mind—I want to catch the energy of the color or the power of the lines. That's one thing I keep in mind. The other thing is that Hans Hartung’s work has a lot of intuition. When he starts to create, it's more like he just starts trying—even like a kid starting to paint something on the canvas of the ground. We saw this documentary and he used this big brush and just let the color go. During the time I was in the residency—it was a six-month residency, so it was very long—I had a lot of free time to actually think of what kind of music I wanted to create next. So I guess just catching this energy of trusting the intuition in the moment and starting to develop from that.

Besides this suite, we will play two songs I wrote for women as artists. One song is combined with a poetry reading. The song is titled, “She Goes to a Silent War.” I wrote the melody based on this poem I wrote. I started to think more about myself as an artist being a woman and how I can contribute to society now. Growing up, I experienced a lot of stereotypical thinking in society. Social norms expect us to be a certain type, or to dress, look, or act a certain way. And I choose to fight against that in my own way. I wrote this poem and then the song. So it's different from the suite, but the other subject I want to talk about.

TJG: Did you write this recently? Has it been performed before? 

YS: I wrote it during the pandemic, so maybe 2020. All this music we are going to play we recorded this May, so hopefully the record will come out next year.

TJG: You have an awesome band playing with you on the recording, and many of the same folks from the recording are playing with you at The Jazz Gallery. How did that particular group of people come together and how did you decide they were the right fit for this specific project? 

YS: I’m glad you asked, because I was thinking I wanted to talk about this band which influenced this project a lot. For Matt Mitchell and Dan Weiss, they are just both musicians I really admire a lot. I often go to their shows and listen to their music. I was reading this article about Hans Hartung, and it talks about how his idea is to balance with chance and control. I feel like Matt and Dan are the perfect model for this concept. We all know they both play in such a unique way, and that comes from discipline and constantly creating things and pushing limits. And that gives them a lot of freedom when they play music. So that's what I really love about them. And I was also curious about how they would approach my music. So I invited them on board to this project, and it's been a really great learning lesson and experience. I really try to push myself harder to be able to go to that free zone with them.

And then for the recording that we did, I have Caroline Davis on the saxophone. Caroline is one of my good friends and I always admire her projects. She always has a strong project and music I love. So it's great to have her. Also, this album features some of the woman’s perspective, so I especially wanted her to be on the album. She's out of town for this concert so we have Alex LoRe, who is also one of my really good friends. He played on my last record, City Animals. So it's great to have him on board again with the band.

On the bass is Marty Kenney. Marty is my long-time friend since I moved to New York. I really like that he plays in many styles of different music. He’s very versatile and also just a very good friend that I love to make music together with. So this band has been great. I hope to play much more with them.

TJG: What do you feel the relationship is between your writing and performing now versus in City Animals, the last record that we heard from you? Do you feel that it's evolved?

YS: It's definitely evolved. I like challenging myself, so I want my music to keep walking forward. I also think because of my background before coming to the States—I studied classical percussion growing up, so a lot of this 20th-century new music is inside of my blood. I mean, I play a lot of jazz and I like playing jazz, and I want to be exposed to this environment and jazz setting as much as I can. But after a while, I kind of want to bring back more of my roots. So it's more avant garde, more like a new music sound. It made me feel even more comfortable, so I really want to bring these two things together.

So after over ten years of concentrated study and playing jazz, I want to bring these improvised techniques and ability back to new music. We improvise in different contexts—not only with chords and with melody, but sometimes in a more open form and we develop the music in that way. For example, I was interested in Matt Michell’s music, so I asked how he developed his material to improvise over really complex forms. So it's a great learning process.

TJG: Do you feel that improvisation plays a different role in this music than it has for, let's say, your last record?

YS: In a “harmony” way, it’s more open, but with rhythm it’s more complex. I'm trying to apply this context to the improvisation. So I feel that’s something new. It's not only based on one chorus of this harmony and progression. Sometimes it’s about this structure or this kind of rhythm or shape. So I tried to tap into this area of improvisation.

TJG: Is there a time we should be looking out for the record to come out?

YS: I’m still figuring it out. It’s being mixed. I’m excited that the record is going to be mixed by David Torn. I’m working with him and hopefully we can move forward from there soon.

TJG: Do you have any other projects or things coming up that you want to talk about? 

YS: This project is more based in Europe for now, but I have an electronic experimental trio with an accordion player and a drummer. Our name is ZB•YU•RA. It’s the first two letters from all three of our names. We just did a tour in Spain. That trio is like the opposite of this Liberated Gesture project. Liberated Gesture has a lot of “composition” materials, but in this trio we work with very simple melodies and then we do a lot of free improv with it. We use this melody as like a check-in point when we go onto the next journey throughout the whole set. So this is the other band I’m excited about, and we’re going to play in Paris for the Festival Jazzycolors in November.

Yuhan Su presents “Liberated Gesture” at The Jazz Gallery on Thursday, October 27. The group features Yuhan Su on vibraphone, Matt Mitchell on piano, Alex LoRe on alto sax, Marty Kenney on bass, and Dan Weiss on drums. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. EDT. $20 general admission (FREE for members), $30 cabaret seating ($20 for members), $20 Livestream (FREE for members). Purchase tickets here.