UNCHARTED FAITH
J.A. Deane – Electronics (Sensei Morph touch controller, Spacecraft granular synthesizer software, Akai MPC Live Digital Audio Workstation)
Jason Kao Hwang – Tucker Barrett solid-body electric violin with a Richard Barbera bridge, Atomic Amplifire 12 multi-FX processor (overdrive, distortion, fuzz, wah-wah, phaser, whammy, pitch shift, delay)
J.A. Deane, called “Dino” by his friends, passed away before this CD was completed. Dino started his musical life touring with Tina Turner and eventually became a great innovator of electronic music, which is by any measure, an extraordinary journey. I met him in the mid-1980’s, playing together in various Butch Morris ensembles. Here is the story of Uncharted Faith, his last project.
After his life partner Colleen Mulvihill passed away in 2019, Dino moved from Denver to a tiny house parked in a rural field in Cortez, Colorado. There, alone in nature with his two dogs, he completed his book, Becoming Music, Conduction & Improvisation as forms of QiGong, which he sent me in December 2020. I reciprocated by sending him my CDs, including Conjure, my duets with Karl Berger, which he especially loved. Despite the pandemic, we agreed to collaborate on a duo recording! On January 28, 2021, I heard his zoom concert for the Red Room in Baltimore. Dino’s phantasmagoric symphonies, vivid and luxuriant with unique sounds, were stunningly beautiful. We corresponded further and our duo project gained momentum. Dino proposed that I send him “5 to 10 minutes of solo acoustic violin” improvisations. He would “work with it,” then send me tracks to overdub. In March I sent him my tracks. All tracks on this CD, from both Dino and myself, are completely improvised.
Dino edited the tracks into “57 gestures” that he would then “map a subset to another instrument (Sensei Morph touch controller & Spacecraft granular synthesizer software).” On May 12 Dino cryptically mentioned health issues. On May 14, he sent me the first five tracks, not yet titled but in the same order as this CD. He wrote: “Every track was created on an Akai MPC Live Digital Audio Workstation (and your original sounds have been shifted and mutated intensely), and then performed and recorded in real-time. I’m obsessed with exploring, exploding & exalting the DNA of sound. Now there is no question that many of these pieces are harmonically dense. I encourage you to embrace and multiply that density with multiple overdubs if you choose to go that way.” On July 2, I completed my overdubs on a Tucker Barrett solid-body electric violin (with a Richard Barbera bridge) through an Atomic Amplifire 12 multi-FX processor with expression pedals assigned to wah, whammy, and delay feedback. I asked him to send me one more track, which surprisingly, he had ready to go. Only for track 5, Speaking in Tongues, and track six, Uncharted Faith, did I record multiple violin tracks.
On July 11, Dino wrote: “I have been avoiding this because I didn’t want it to negatively shade your contribution to what is probably going to be the final project of my life. I am honored that it will be with you. I have stage four throat cancer. Please follow your heart with how you want to play into this final world. Please forgive me and understand that I simply didn’t want the weight of this to shade your performance as you were coming from a place of such joy, the same place I was coming from when I created my performances.” Dino had a concrete belief in the spirit world, having communicated to Colleen through psychic mediums several times. He decided not to receive treatment and on July 12 wrote: “What is compelling is to be with Colleen in spirit form. I am making a conscious journey to transition.” On July 13 I wrote: “Your decision is courageous and from a deep spiritual wisdom gained through your extraordinary musical journey. I am deeply moved by your faith. I am so thankful that we have created music together. You opened my mind and ears to the expressivity of electronic processing, which enriched my life. I had not heard anyone play in that sonic universe with your boundless imagination and soul. I know your journey forward will be full of beauty and wonder, just like your music.” On July 15, I began sending him mixes and he gave me insightful suggestions. He also empowered me to name the tracks and complete this production. On July 23, 2021, J.A. Deane transitioned in New Mexico with his dearest friends, Joe Sabella and Katie Harlow at his side. Born on February 16, 1950, he was 71.
– Jason Kao Hwang
My thanks to John Sharpe for this feature article. Click on the article for a zoomable image.
My string orchestra, Myths of Origin, had a great performance at the Vision Festival. The music is an outgrowth of my years with Butch Morris, organizing the Strings for Leroy Jenkins for Billy Bang and my Spontaneous River Orchestra.
Jason Kao Hwang’s composition, Myths of Origin, performed by his improvising string orchestra with drums, defies mainstream society’s enduring fetish for Orientalist fantasies, a history woven inextricably into unconscious biases that can, as evident in this past year’s exponential increase of hate crimes against Asian Americans, progress into explicitly racist violence.
Myths of Origin, inspired by jazz, funk, new music, classical and world traditions, forges a unique language, free of genre expectations, to revolutionize our relationships to each other. It will be performed by Jason Kao Hwang’s improvising string orchestra, which is comprised of musicians from a wide variety of backgrounds.
Through a notated score interacting with improvisations that are shaped by a lexicon of conducting gestures, the orchestra will conjure images of mercurial beauty. Vibrations rise and fall in a life cycle whirling and grooving through consciousness faster than the speed of thought. The flow of spontaneous moments illuminates the possibilities of our journey, revealing truths of who we can become. To be transformed by possibilities grounded in truth, is to transcend all Myths of Origin.
REVIEWS OF JASON KAO HWANG/HUMAN RITES TRIO
Violinist/violist Jason Kao Hwang's trio with Ken Filiano (bass) and Andrew Drury (drums) is one of the most finely honed small groups in the improvised music scene...It all comes together on the closing "Defiance", the telepathic interplay, the storytelling, the rotating narratives and the sterling musicianship. Robert Bush, New York City Jazz Record. Read Full Review
The veteran New York violinist/violist Jason Kao Hwang, who's worked with Anthony Braxton, William Parker and the late Butch Morris, among others, creates work under his own name that resist categorization: Sometimes it's jazz, sometimes cham,ber music and sometimes entirely uncategorizable ... Which is to say that this is heavy, profound music. - Philip Freeman, Downbeat Magazine Read Full Review
With 15 years of mutual collaboration and musical understanding, Hwang, Filiano and Drury have developed a natural, fascinating language that is fully expressed on Human Rites Trio. - Filipe Freita, jazztrail.net
It's a marriage of complete control and artful abandon that's never short on surprise...Jason Kao Hwang, Ken Filiano and Andrew Drury know themselves well enough to be lost and found in each other's sounds, and that beauty points to what's right with Human Rites Trio's music. - Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz
…when it comes to improvised music, I consider Jason’s violin/viola work to be right up there at the TOP! … I give Jason and his bandmates a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED rating, with an “EQ” (energy quotient) score of 4.99 for this highly engaging sonic experience. - Rotcod Zzaj, Contemporary Fusion
Read all the complete reviews under Press
Below is a video of Jason Kao Hwang/Human Rites trio with music from the CD.
My thanks to the 2022 the Downbeat Critics Poll for their votes. I share their love with all the musicians I have ever played with. We make this music together!