Jason Kao Hwang: “Soliloquies: Unaccompanied Pizzicato Violin Improvisations” 

by Michael Doherty

Violinist and composer Jason Kao Hwang is adept at telling stories with his music.  Last year, in fact, he released an album titled Book Of Stories. His new release is titled Soliloquies. A soliloquy tells a different and personal tale, for it is within soliloquies that characters reveal their thoughts and worries and goals directly to the audience. Remember, no character ever lies in a soliloquy. Also, apart from the audience, characters are generally alone when delivering soliloquies. And so it is that Jason Kao Hwang’s new album is made up of solo violin pieces. The album opens with the appropriately titled “At The Beginning,” which is striking in its dramatic use of pauses as well as for Jason Kao Hwang’s style of delivery, the pizzicato technique, which is usually used only in certain sections of songs rather than throughout a piece or album. It does feel like a voice, and reminds me of the way different actors might choose to approach a well-known speech, making it fresh with well-placed breaths. And what Jason Kao Hwang does here is command our attention and draw us into his own story. That’s followed by “Hungry Shadows,” a powerful image, the music fitting that image, with a voice that is at times perhaps uncertain or wary. There is an intimacy here created between the subject and audience. In “Vagabond,” it feels like the past has surfaced and is speaking to us in short phrases that we won’t easily forget. In “Remembering Our Conversation,” there is the sense of wisdom and knowledge imparted, handed down, and then made useful. Knowledge in action. “Where The River Runs Both Ways” transports us, both to a different time and a different space, but touches something within us, and so the unknown feels familiar. I love many of the titles Jason Kao Hwang gives his pieces, and on this album “Silhouettes Lean Forward” is particularly good, that title providing us with a strong image as the music begins, as well as a question. To what are they leaning forward? We listen for the answer, but instead get caught up in the unusual direction of the track. There is something playful here which attracts us. Then there are captivating moments in “Encirclement,” a dramatic energy running through it that might have you holding your breath at times. The action of “Bending Branches Into Roots” (another wonderful title) comes in short spurts, as if trying out different things to get an idea of the outcome. “Shards” makes me think of heavy rain drops falling into a metallic river, and the river responding. The past steps into the present again on “Before God,” the album’s final track, which feels like it is reaching out for answers. In fact, there seems to be a need for them. But the voice is alone, at times its own questions echoing in the darkness. This album is scheduled to be released on September 15, 2024.  Read at Michael Doherty's blog