My thanks to the 2021 Downbeat Critics Poll for their votes. I share their love with all the musicians I have ever played with. We make this music together!
For Asian American Heritage Month
Recently I watched an hour-long television program that focused on Asian American issues with a lively panel of Asian American scholars and leaders. Having never ever seen a show like this before, I was stunned. It made me reflect upon my life as a mostly invisible minority. I am often the only Asian American on stage, and for that simple reason my presence for many would be a performance of ethnicity.
Asian American artists create in a cultural industry where the power structure has an enduring fetish for Orientalist fantasies. Even for works of genuine integrity and validity, any fortuitous commercial success usually has linkage, however involuntary, complex and subtle, to any number of Orientalist tropes.
With people to whom an Asian face is the Other, this cultural history is woven inextricably into the unconscious biases that can progress into explicitly racist violence. Clearly this perpetually churning, degenerative process has fueled the 150% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes this year.
I am united with Arts for Art to stand strong against this hatred and violence towards Asian Americans.
The music of jazz has always embraced a wide diversity of individuals and sounds to respect, celebrate and defend the humanity of all people.
– Jason Kao Hwang
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 2020 El Intruso International Critics Poll for selecting me first for Violin/Viola. My thanks for the votes in Downbeat Magazine's 2020 68th Annual Critics Poll.
Sharing all this love with all the musicians whom I play with. We make the music together.
Listen to and purchase Conjure at Bandcamp
.. the two created these fragile and delicate moments, rich in musicality and feeling, one on violin and viola, the other on piano and to the vibraphone. They are engaging atmospheres in which the accent moves on pathos, communication, beyond the desecrating or angry moments of the free with which the two in the past have had to do. Among the most beautiful moments Below Zero, with the pizzicato on Hwang's violin that meets the vibraphone, is a very special atmosphere that the two manage to create in improvisation. Overall it is an incision without moments of emptiness, which involves the listener from beginning to end, of two musicians in a state of grace who had something real to say to each other and made it public. - Vittori LoConte, musiczoom.it Read Full Review