by Glenn Siegel
photo by Yvonne Mendez

As a presenter used to counting audience members by the dozen, having more than 650 people attend the latest Magic Triangle Jazz Series concert was out of the ordinary, to say the least. There are a few reasons why Bowker Auditorium was filled to the rafters on November 21. Avery Sharpe, who brought his quintet and eight-member choir to Amherst, is a UMass graduate and a long-time resident of the Pioneer Valley. The project he presented, “400: An African-American Musical Portrait,” marking the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, is timely and has epic sweep. He also happens to be an accomplished, world-renown bassist, composer and bandleader. Sharpe’s appearance generated cover stories, feature articles and radio interest throughout the region.

The pre-concert buzz was justified by a monumental, syncopated survey of the enormous contribution Black people have made to American music. Like the recent recording, 400 (JKNM Records,) the concert followed a chronological progression of African-American musical history. The evening – filled with joy, sorrow and resistance – touched on blues, ragtime, various jazz styles, spoken word and church music.

The strength and clarity of Sharpe’s writing, the sure direction of choir director Kevin Sharpe, and heavy contributions by Don Braden, tenor saxophone and flute, Duane Eubanks, trumpet, Edsel Gomez, piano, Ronnie Burrage, drums, and the choir, insured the evening was much more than a flat, breeze-through of various styles.

Early in the night, Sharpe, now 65, reminisced about sitting in the balcony of Bowker as an undergraduate, going crazy for the NY Bass Violin Choir. That night, watching Milt Hinton, Richard Davis and Bill Lee, the electric bassist decided to engage with the acoustic instrument. With guidance from then-UMass professor Reggie Workman, Sharpe embarked on a career that has taken him to the highest reaches of the jazz world. You could tell it was meaningful for him to return to this site of inspiration and present this large-scale project in front of so many friends and admirers.

When I originally contacted Avery about performing in the Magic Triangle Series, I was thinking quintet. When I heard the Extended Family Choir on the recording, I had a strong inclination to add voices. With brother Kevin Sharpe at the helm, the eight singers included sister Wanda Rivera, and niece and nephew Sofia and Rob Rivera. Avery reminded us that, unlike their brothers and sisters who were brought to South America and the Caribbean, Africans in North America were largely denied access to the drum. The voice, however, could be neither confiscated, nor silenced.

The Choir’s solo feature, “Antebellum,” occurring almost half way through the program, acted as a bridge between centuries three and four. It began with a beautifully sung hymn, and ended in gospel, with the insistent refrain, “Wake up, rise up.” Another vocal high point, the spiritual/protest anthem,“Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” was arranged by Sharpe. When Sofia Rivera stepped to the mic and threw down her own spoken words, “America, land I love, country that despises me in one breath then praises me in the next,” they fell on us like a mind bomb.

Generally speaking, I’m good with one bass solo a set. There were more than that on Thursday. How lucky for me then, that the bass player was Avery Sharpe, who thinks melodically and can play anything.

After the last piece, the forward-thinking, “500,” UMass Department of Afro-American Studies Chair Stephanie Shonekan, professor John Bracy and photographer Bobby Davis presented Sharpe with three large Davis photographs. It was a nice acknowledgement of Sharpe’s contribution to his alma mater, western Massachusetts and jazz. High on the music, with so many family and friends on the stage and in the audience, it was a feel-good moment.

by Glenn Siegel
photo by Jennifer Levesque

It felt a little daunting to come face-to-face with Jen Shyu, whose talent, ambition, curiosity and energy has resulted in so many accomplishments in a short amount of time. But her friendliness and her laugh are genuine and disarming; putting people at ease is yet another of her super powers.

She made a lot of friends during her three-day UMass residency, which culminated in an evening-length performance of her solo piece, Nine Doors, at Bowker Auditorium on November 7. Shyu’s concert, co-produced by the Fine Arts Center’s Magic Triangle Jazz Series and the Asian Arts & Culture Program, showcased her mastery of biwa, moon lute, gayageum, piano, percussion, movement, and most spectacularly, voice.

Nine Doors is a meditation on loss, dedicated to her friend, the 30-year old Indonesian shadow-puppet master Sri Joko Raharjo. In her opening remarks, she asked the audience to reflect on the loss of a loved one. After getting us to pair up for a “shoot shake” (stand up, hold hands, move them back and forth, yell ‘shoot’ repeatedly,) and some deep breathing, we settled in for a moving, virtuosic 75-minute tour de force.

After getting the phone call detailing the car crash that killed Joko, his wife and 11-month old son, she picked up the biwa, a four-string Japanese lute, and wailed. Her anguished singing and playing set the tone for the ritual drama that followed. The piece showcased the deep dive Shyu has taken into the stories, poetry, dress, dance and music of Korea, China, Japan, Indonesia and Taiwan.

Born in Peoria, Illinois to Taiwanese and East Timorese parents, she learned ballet and won awards as a classical pianist and violinist before studying opera at Stanford. While in the Bay Area, she befriended a group of Asian American improvisers, including Francis Wong, Jon Jang and Anthony Brown, who encouraged her to explore her cultural roots. A push from Steve Coleman first sent Shyu to Taiwan, beginning a life-long, in-person pursuit of indigenous traditions. Foundation support from Guggenheim, Fulbright, Doris Duke and USA Fellow has enabled her to spend years abroad, learning languages and songs, making friends, finding collaborators and gaining first-hand knowledge of traditional practices.

I first encountered Shyu’s music about eight years ago, listening hard to her exquisite duo record with bassist Mark Dresser, Synastry (Pi Recordings, 2011), her contemporaneous contributions to Steve Coleman’s Pi Recordings, and her own band, Jade Tongue, which over the years has included Thomas Morgan, Dan Weiss, Mat Maneri, Ambrose Akinmusire, Miles Okazaki and David Binney. She is a chance-taker, the embodiment of the Pi tag line: “Dedicated to the innovative.”

Song of Silver Geese (2017), her latest Pi recording, contains ensemble versions of some of the material we heard on Thursday. “I wanted to write for as big a group as I could,” Shyu told National Sawdust, which premiered Nine Doors in 2018, “and then distill it down to a solo.”

“It operates in some unpatrolled border zone,” said NPR, “blurring lines between folk song and art song, the traditional and the avant-garde, Western and Eastern, between waking consciousness and dream logic.” That’s exactly what we heard.

The piano, featured on “Song of Baridegi,” stood out from the three stringed instruments, providing brightness, and an edge of jazz energy; a western instrument in an East Asian music world. Shyu sung with abandon while generating sheets of sound through all registers of the 9-foot Steinway. It stirred the audience.

There were many other sublime moments: a short Javanese dance with a red silken scarf, the Korean female centered myth of Ati Batik, recited in English with soribuk drum accompaniment, the disembodied recorded sounds of drums and Joko and his family laughing together, Shyu holding her gayageum on her shoulder like a coffin, slowly turning in half light. The evening unfolded like a dream: a fleeting image, a brief encounter, a feeling of ritual, a transformation.