 Hello, my name is Glenn Siegel. I am the founding director of the Magic Triangle Jazz Series, a program of the Fine Arts Center. I'm also a co-founder with Priscilla Page of a community-based non-profit called Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares, and it's my honor to be speaking with Jen Shu today. Jen Shu is a groundbreaking, multi-lingual, vocalist, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, 2019 United States Artist Fellow, 2016 Doris Duke Artist, and was voted 2017 Downbeat Critics' Poll Rising Star Female Vocalist. Born in Peoria, Illinois, to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, Shu is widely regarded for her virtuosic singing and riveting stage presence. Carving out her own beyond-category space in the art world. She has performed with such musical innovators as Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Wadatta Leo Smith, Steve Coleman, and Vijay Iyer. She performs her solo piece, Nine Doors at University of Massachusetts, as part of the Magic Triangle Jazz Series. Welcome, Jen. I understand this is your first visit to Western Mass, so welcome to our neighborhood. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. I wanted to begin asking you a question about your path as an artist. You grew up dancing ballet and performing European classical music on piano and violin, and graduated from Stanford University studying opera. So how and when did your interest in non-Western music and instruments develop? Yes. I think it was a slow kind of progression, so indeed while I was in the classical kind of world, European classical music world, I started getting interested in musical theater, and that was the first time I sang as well, and I was very shy before I even sang. I feel like I went from being non-talking to singing. But so through musical theater, because so many of these show tunes were borrowed and kind of played with and interpreted by great jazz musicians, I kind of got through, you know, found jazz through Cole Porter and these shows, Psy Coleman. So it was really through musical theater, and I definitely, being on stage, singing and dancing and acting, that was so attractive to me. For a while, though, piano and violin were kind of that kind of very traditional thing, like competing, performing, and then musical theater was this separate dream. And so it wasn't until, I would say, even, let's see, in college at Stanford, I kept getting asked to front for jazz combos, like little ensembles. And so I would just kind of pretend to be a jazz singer, what I thought was, you know, with the dresses and the hair and the sultry looks, you know, I thought that that was what a jazz singer should do. So I kind of played that role through Stanford, you know, through my time at Stanford, while getting this degree in classical singing and classical vocal performance. And then I did the Stanford Jazz Workshop just after graduating. And I met some beautiful musicians from Cuba, because at the time I was also so obsessed with Afro-Cuban music, and having also been studying Spanish throughout school and high school and college. And so Daphne Spritto and Yoswani Terry, I got to meet at Stanford Jazz Workshop. And a friend of mine said, hey, let's go, let's do this program called Plaza Cuba, which was a Bay Area-based program where you could, you know, pay a tuition and learn in Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, and they would arrange everything. And so, and I was, I moved to San Francisco at the time and kind of picked up some day jobs as an intern for Other Mines Festival was one of my day jobs. And then I was kind of an assistant producer to Tony Kelly of the, that experimental theater company called Thick Description, and he had a theater. And so I had these two day jobs while I was singing with kind of a salsa band. I met, but I think the crucial thing was meeting people from the community of the Asian, Asian Improv Arts world. And so Francis Wong, John Jang, Jenny Lim, Anthony Brown, you know, these wonderful people who are now dear mentors. They really, you know, introduced me to doing, you know, jazz in a different way and varied, very tied to your heritage and your ancestry. And I never, never thought about that before. So it was definitely after college and in those three, I really think they were really formative years in San Francisco. Working with Francis, Jimmy Biala, John Carlos Perea, Melody Takata, and Lenore Lee. So, you know, we had a collective that Jimmy and Lenore, you know, asked me to be part of called the Red Jay Collective. And I really feel that that was such an important kind of outlet for this idea of not just multi-disciplinary art making, but multi-cultural art making and just a really intimate, you know, becoming really close friends and sharing stories and, you know, figuring out how to make those relationships something to offer to an audience. And so, yeah, that was when that first began. And Francis, you know, then was encouraging me to start arranging these time in these folk songs that I had photocopies of that I actually always had with me at Stanford. And my dad gave me like a booklet of these photocopies stapled. And it was my fourth grand-auntie who had given them to my dad and to give to me. So he gave that photocopy of those like, I would say, 15 songs of these famous Taiwanese folk songs from especially the 1910, 1920s, that era when Japan was still occupying Taiwan. And, you know, very sad and full of longing. So, yeah, I started to make arrangements and started to form my own band and play with the melodies. But I realized, I soon realized that I was just doing it on a very surface level. And I just knew that the dream began forming of going to Taiwan, connecting with these relatives I hadn't met yet of my dads. And then, you know, where do these folk songs come from, you know, beyond the paper, these photocopies, and they were already kind of arranged for piano and voice. I'm like, well, there must be older stuff, you know. And so, yeah, so Francis is really encouraging when I got this idea and he said something so important, which was, yeah, I think you should just hang out, it'd be good to just hang out there. So, and around that time, I did meet Steve Coleman also. And he, you know, coming from New York, he was really the one to push me to, you know, okay, if you want to go to Taiwan, just go to Taiwan. If you want to move to New York, just move to New York. And so I did just that in 2003. I went to Taiwan and I went to Cuba because after that Placicuba experience, I found out about a little about the history of the Chinese laborers in Cuba and how that migration happened. And so I went back the second time wanting to know more about that migration and just a dentured labor history and then ended up creating, you know, a piece based off of that. And so I just did everything in 2003. And then at that time, you know, in San Francisco, I just quit my job. I quit teaching. I broke my apartment lease. I was telling the students yesterday and just, yeah, I just moved all my stuff to my parents' house in Peoria or in Dunlap, Illinois and then went to Taiwan and then later, soon after I moved to New York. And yeah, so that was, you know, singing in Steve's band was definitely like an apprenticeship and it allowed me to, you know, start forming my own band in New York and connecting with musicians there and kind of carrying on this idea of bringing my research and interest in, you know, starting from my heritage, but then I, you know, China, East Timor, which is where my mom is from, and then just getting interested in, like, Korean pansori and also Indonesian, you know, Javanese gamelan singing and just kind of following these songs, especially female voices, you know, just as old of the songs that I could find. I wanted to, indigenous music from Taiwan, for instance, and so it was just, like, wanting to trace that kind of singing with my voice and be aware of how much that would teach me and how much these women, these elder women would teach me. Yes, no, it's fascinating. And I wanted to ask you about your learning style. I mean, you speak ten languages, you play many instruments, you're an ethnomusicologist, in effect. Do you have a system or approach about learning? Do you have a way of going about it? Yeah, I think over time I've gotten better at, I think, what I learned, like, early on when I first went to Taiwan, I was so shy, like, I would record singers, but then I wouldn't ask them, well, what do the lyrics mean, or I wouldn't, you know, there wouldn't be time to go over the lyrics, because they kind of would improvise them anyway. So by the time I got to East Timor, I realized we need more days in each place or each village or with each family, and so I would record it, and then the next day we would sit together with, like, you know, the main, sometimes the leader of the group or the singing group and just play it back line by line, and he would, I would usually have a translator with me and we'd just transcribe, transcribe, transcribe, and then later I would translate into English. So I got better about that, about not being shy, but I think across the board the approach first is humility, and also gaining people's trust is really important, and so yeah, it's like you have to not be shy, but you also have to be patient, and you know, one of the first wonderful magical fieldwork experiences in Taiwan for me was, I was there on a grant from Asian Cultural Council, and this was 2007, I want to say, and we were in Hualien, so the eastern part of Taiwan, and I think it was like the border between Hualien and Taidong, and we were, I was taken there by a woman who supported, Taiwanese woman who supported Asian Cultural Council, and she was really, she just loved music and dance as well, so she took me there, and she knew, it's Ame, Ame group, Ame tribe, she knew this particular family, so, and she, you know, so generous, she would say, you know, she came all the way from America, her dad's Taiwanese, and she's a great singer, and she's looking for, you know, to learn songs, and it happened to be Christmas Day, it was Christmas Day, and everyone was, luckily everyone was already gathered, because they were about to have a big lunch, but of course everyone was really shy, you know, and didn't want to do anything, so, so then she started to play this game, like, how about Jen sings a little song, and you sing a song, and so we went back and forth, and I think they could sense, you know, I think they sang summer time, and then they said, oh, okay, she sings, okay, well, let's, you know, and then they just, like, one of the men just broke out in a song, and then women were, of course, the shyest, so quite a few men who sang first, and then the women opened up, and then finally there was a man who, he was also Ame, and he just kind of stood up and said, you know, she came all the way from America, and we need to show her, her time in these roots, and so then they actually enacted a festival, which usually happens July of a year, even though it was December when we were there, and they got, you know, in the big circle where the elders sit in the middle, you know, in chairs, and then the younger people dance around in a circle, and so they actually dressed me and my friend, my Taiwanese friend who is my guide, and their young Tanyu is his nickname, big cow, so one of the younger males from that clan, so they dressed us in traditional clothes, and then we just joined them in the dance, which are, you know, very simple foot movements, and then the singing, but something like, you know, hoia, hoia, hoia, how-o-y-a-n, ho-o-o-o-a-y-a-n, and songs that a lot of them just use ho-yas and he-yas, and so that was so beautiful, and we spent all day celebrating, and then there was a blind singer who came, you know, and everyone was excited, oh it's It's Marason, it's Marason, and Marason was apparently a great singer, but his voice was more like almost operatic, and he knew a lot of these old Japanese songs, so they all asked him, you know, oh come sing, there's a young girl from New York, and she's Taiwanese, and you have to sing for her, and I just have on video this great moment when he's like listening to them talking, he's like, he starts warming up, he's like me, me, me, me. But that was beautiful, and it just went on into the night until finally he said, oh well I'm going to be driven back to Taipei, come with us, you know, but then he's like, but first I have to stop by my friend's house, you know, so let's just five, five minutes was stopped by, it turned in a half an hour, and you know, we were thinking, well I don't know if he's ever going to leave, so we did like three house visits, and he's just like just five minutes, but it was like each half an hour, and I thought well we're never going to get out of here, so finally we took a bus, and he was still visiting with friends, but you know that phrase, just five minutes, it really, that is like the lesson that I've carried with me through life, like even if you think that, oh that place isn't, it's not worth going, we don't have any time, you have five minutes, and that five minutes can plant a seed, and you know, give you a future of a two year path, so anyway, so many stories. Yeah, yeah, no that's so fascinating. I wanted to ask you about developing projects, how do you go about settling on a project, you have a number, you're performing nine doors, which I assumed took a while to conceive and perfect, how do you settle on a project? I, lately it's, I feel like after Indonesia, so I was able to go to Indonesia on a Fulbright from 2011, I stayed up there till essentially 2014, but I went to Korea for six months in that time, and I went to East Timor again, and so the first project, but I knew that oh I'm going to create a solo project, I kind of knew beforehand, yes I'm going to create something solo out of this experience, you know, and I got to meet this film director named Gary Nugroho from Indonesia, who's kind of a famous, he's like David Lynch of Indonesia, independent filmmaker, really, really ultra creative, but he still kind of has a celebrity status, but I saw his film before I left, it was recommended to me by a friend, Jessica Kenney, who's a great vocalist, and she said you should check out this film called Oporajawa directed by Godin, it's like a beautiful combination of tradition and contemporary, like avant-garde elements that I, when I did see it, I thought okay, I need to find this person and work with him somehow, so when I first got to Indonesia, like September of 2011, I was on a mission, I thought I'm going to meet, find this person, and I was able to meet him, I think December? Yeah, I was soon after, just through artists, and so, you know what, I told him I was kind of very, what's the word, precocious, or, you know, I said yes, I'm looking for a director from my solo work, which I had no idea what that work was, but, and he, I gave him my CDs when I had met him, and then he emailed back, he said oh, I listen to all your music, watch all your videos, I'd be very happy to work with you, and so, so from that point and through my time in Indonesia, we had conversations, we would meet, he saw a solo performance I just put together that I performed in Jakarta in Salihara, and it was very much kind of like a precursor to what later became a piece that he did direct, called Solo Right Seven Breaths, and that I premiered right, like right after, soon after I got back from Indonesia in 2014, so that project was, you know, that was born out of that really intensive time of research and learning, I think in that time I learned like four languages in those like three years, you know, or began to start learning, and Indonesia was definitely fluent by the time I got out of the end of the full break, and then, you know, I really kind of depend on life, I depend on life to show me the next project or, you know, events that are happening soon after, it's actually just, I premiered that in May, just a few weeks after that premiere in 2014, I got an email, a group email from the gamelan world, like world list, basically, and stating that Sri Jokor Harjo Chilik was killed in a car crash, and you know, and this was a young man who was 30 at the time, I met him in 2011, you know, the beginning of my full break, and brilliant Dalang, who is the puppeteer of the tradition called Lian Kulit, the shadow puppetry of Java, and we had begun to collaborate, improvise, I learned a lot from him, and he wanted to learn, you know, he was learning about jazz improvisation, you know, from me, and just, you know, music from our scene, our friends, and he was just already an ambassador, he did the 1B program, which, Being on a Can, I think they sponsored them, and anyway, he was phenomenal, and then learning about his death like that, and that the devastation really, just the grieving process led to Song of Silver Geese, which led to Nine Doors, the piece we'll be doing tonight, and that began, I was telling the students last night, it began as just like rituals that I didn't feel like perform, I almost didn't feel like performing solo rights, even though I had a lot of things booked for that, I felt like just improvising with Mammoniri or Bedmonder, and you're just musicians I love to just grieve, and just, you know, yeah, and just kind of have a live ritual, and that did lead to Song of Silver Geese, which I built with Satoshi Haga, who's an amazing dancer, and you know, along the way, we were very lucky to get commissions, or, you know, solo rights, seven breaths was possible because of roulette, and residency that they offered me, and then Song of Silver Geese was possible because I applied for Chamber Music America, New Jazz Works, Grant, and got it, and so I was able to, you know, fund my musicians and find rehearsal time with Satoshi, like through Exploring the Metropolis, so it's, you know, I'm very good at, if I have an idea, I'll just find the ways to fund it, and yeah, so the, that's how these ideas, these performances come about, Zero Grasses, which I just premiered last week, like it's kind of third solo work I guess, it's kind of the opposite of Nine Doors, and I always try to do something the opposite of what I did before, and I think I was telling you that Zero Grasses was, it's mostly in English, it's not based a lot on, like not directly on traditional music that I've been studying, it's much, much more personal and just like my songwriting, and dealing with very current issues that I think me and a lot of women, especially women artists are dealing with, that being fertility, and also, you know, me too, stories that fall into gray areas that, you know, so there are a lot of things that are dad passing away in April, so that's very much like right now, that I wanted to have a forum to, yeah, have those ideas shared and discussed, and it's funny, after the premiere of National Sawdust, the audience, you know, the very wonderful standing ovation, they sat down and they didn't move, it's like they just wanted to talk, so I said, are you guys okay? And we just had this spontaneous Q&A, like, talk and chat, and yeah. Well, Jen, I have a lot more questions, but we'll have to have you back another time, I wanted to ask you about women in jazz, and we have voice collective, and you're teaching and educating, so let's do it again. Let's do it again. Thank you very much. Thank you, Glenn.