Yuhan Su

Liberated Gesture

Sunnyside

What are the odds of us covering two female Taiwanese-born, NYC-based vibraphonists leading quintets and releasing albums in the same week?  However low those odds may have been, we bring you Liberated Gesture, the fourth album (and second for Sunnyside) from Yuhan Su, and you will also see on these pages Chien Chien Lu’s Built In System: Live New York. Su, the more experienced of the two and awardee of the 2019 DownBeat Critics Poll in the category “Rising Star” of Vibraphone, leads a quintet of some of the finest improvisers In NYC’s creative music scene with pianist Matt Mitchell, alto saxophonist Caroline Davis, bassist Marty Kenny, and drummer Tim Weiss. Mitchell, among his many sideman roles, is the pianist for Ches Smith’s We All Break and Davis just issued her new socially conscious album Aluna, which we covered here. Su formed this ensemble in late 2021 after having composed half of these pieces during a six-month residency in Paris in 2019 and the rest during the pandemic both in Taiwan and NYC. She writes about freedom, about being willing to wade into unknown places, and not so willingly accept conventional norms. As such, the music is complex in terms of both rhythms and tonality. Atonality and dissonance play key roles but there is a quiet beauty that infuses these pieces throughout.

The focal point of the album occurs in its second half with the three-movement “Liberated Gesture” suite, all rendered by the quartet with Davis sitting out. The suite is inspired by the work of Abstract Impressionist Hans Hartung,  q post World War II German-French painter admired by Su for expressing freedom with his brush through his 70-year career. “Arc” is a slow moving, even ponderous at time, ballad that eventually takes on a waltz-like, dreamy quality with stellar interplay between Su and Mitchell. “Tightrope Walk” begins with Weiss and Kenny setting a polyrhythmic pattern with Mitchell and then Su climbing aboard and riding the changing meters throughout in jagged, bumpy fashion. By contrast, “Hartung’s Light” flows smoothly with gorgeous, resounding vibraphone and piano notes.

The opening “Hi-Tech Pros and Cons” Is a fast paced, frenetic piece that belies the previous statement, however with Davis’s agitated alto above definitive chords struck by Mitchell and Su representing the angst and anxiety or lost or needing to be replaced too soon iPhones. “Character” is gentler is tone but has shifting rhythms from busy to calm, reflective of finding freedom from within given limitations according to Su, who’s alternately pensive and animated vibraphone is the featured instrument in the first half while Mitchell crafts an angular, free-spirited excursion as well over Kenny’s arco bass. Davis sits out for “Naked Swimmer” as Su paints a aural portrait of a swim in an icy cold lake in Taiwan when she experienced a sensation of amazing serenity. Here the carefully placed vibraphone and piano notes resonate and just seem suspended in the ether as the drum-bass tandem is remarkably restrained.

“Didion” is inspired by Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking with Davis and Su in unison on the melody above Mitchell’ cluster arpeggios and the septuplet groove meant to emulate a river “filled with sorrow, passion, and honesty.” Mitchell delivers a free ranging solo and then comps behind Davis’s floating and fluttering lines. Somehow, the vibe walks the line between edgy and soothing. Activist Davis is the perfect choice to read the poem, “She Goes to a Silent War,” composed by Su in Mandarin and translated by Jiaowen Hu meant as empowerment for women. The accompanying sonic blend of the full quintet is initially melancholy and almost otherworldly but builds to more triumphant tones with Kenny’s bow work again noteworthy.  “Siren Days” was composed in NYC early in the pandemic when the sounds of sirens were heard 24-7. As expected, there’s a frantic sense of panic coursing through as Davis, Su and Mitchell, roam freely through the scales to a propulsive momentum from Kenny and Weiss that occasionally breaks, only to resume with more intensity to a declarative climax. In the final bow, having honored a painter and an author, Su nods to photographer Hassan Hajaj and his shots of people in Moroccan clothing in striking poses in “Hassan’s Fashion Magazine.” With Kenny on electric bass (this is the only track), the piece retains some of the angularity heard in the others, but it also has an aggressive funk-like element to reflect the “fierce” look of those in his photographs.

Su’s music is challenging, inspired, and ultimately rewarding. You can easily get lost in it.

• Jim Hynes

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