The New York Times (READ HERE) on Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses (NY Times Playlist):
"The singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu draws on jazz, Asian music and much more. Her new album, “Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses,” reflects on loss, memory and perseverance. It opens with “Living’s a Gift,” a suite of songs using lyrics written by middle schoolers during the pandemic: “We’ve lost our minds, lost our time to shine.” The music is ingenious and resilient; leading her jazzy quintet, Jade Tongue, Shyu multitracks her voice into a frisky, intricately contrapuntal choir, folding together angular phrases...." –Jon Pareles, The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal (READ HERE) on Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses:
"...we share in her powerful unpacking of unsettled feelings. This owes to Ms. Shyu’s uncommon gift for storytelling and her singular voice. The most appealing qualities of her singing—finely nuanced and ever-shifting tones, a balance of fierceness and tenderness—are present also in the playing here by trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and violist Mat Maneri, who use gestures (a choked-off note, a leaning pitch) more than declarations to communicate. Ms. Shyu’s music, which flows like good jazz without riding familiar rhythms, benefits from her communion with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Dan Weiss, her partners for more than a decade."–Larry Blumenfeld, The Wall Street Journal
Grammy.com (READ HERE) on Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses:
‘A harrowing-yet-beautiful grief journey, the album braids the shock of Shyu's father's death with memories of racism and sexism from throughout her life. On tunes like "Lament for Breonna Taylor," "When I Have Power" and "Father Slipped Into Eternal Dream," personal and global sorrow pool into one. "I just think these themes are interlinked," she explains, in the context of a deadly pandemic and continuing police violence. "You kind of see how differently that manifests for people, depending on your privilege." But by examining both micro and macro grief through the same lens, Shyu sees both with more clarity—and by communing with Zero Grasses, listeners can too.”–Morgan Enos,
SF Classical Voice (READ HERE) on Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses:
"Shyu has become a master at connecting her own experiences with different people and cultures of the world she so clearly loves. To process her father’s death, she recruits...the email she received from the sheriff notifying her of [her father's] death, and the Indonesian language she studied in her travels. To declare solidarity with the movement for Black lives, Shyu brings together her anger and grief, words of Breonna Taylor’s mother, and lyrics about the history of Chinese indentured servants who worked in Cuba alongside other kidnapped Africans. In the interweaving of all these histories, words, feelings, entire languages, and song traditions lies Jen Shyu’s art....Shyu is a responsible, rigorous, compassionate artist and she is doing the work we need."–Tamzin Elliott, SF Classical Voice
The New York Times on Nine Doors - 5 Standout Shows (Read HERE), "Ms. Shyu turned the stage into a space of imaginative ritual; she framed storytelling and mythmaking as contemporary phenomena — even necessities….That magic remained throughout the set: A simple jazz club stage became a territory of belief, narrative and wonder." - Giovanni Russonello
The New York Times on Nine Doors at Resonant Bodies Festival 2018 (Read HERE), "...Ms. Shyu wove together a dizzying variety of moods. The piece contains music of mourning, dedicated to friends of the composer who were killed in a car accident. There are comic storytelling jaunts that incorporate elements of folklore. Ms. Shyu’s vocal solidity — whether tender and contemplative, or more overtly theatrical - is what made the set cohere. Her sensitive instrumental work (on percussion, piano and Taiwanese moon lute) was a generous bonus." - Seth Colter Walls
Pitchfork on Song of Silver Geese album (Read HERE), “Here, conceptual density and improvisational fire manage to complement, rather than obscure, her overall compositional design. There may never be a genre heading that can do justice to such a method. But that is no great loss. Shyu’s personal language - the product of singular study and many curiosities—can tell her story persuasively on its own.” - Seth Colter Walls
Downbeat Magazine on Song of Silver Geese album (Read HERE), “Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Jen Shyu’s Song of Silver Geese showcases exceptional performance artistry influenced by Shyu’s Taiwanese and East Timorese ancestry, with numerous languages aboard from Shyu’s passionate fieldwork in experimental music and dance….Song of Silver Geese is a cathartic compositional work. The traveling is inward and extroverted, exploring deep emotional connections. Dramatic Indonesian, Javanese, Mandarin, Tetum, Korean and improvisatory vocals are made universal by Shyu. Her captivating vision, melodic spells and abstract pathways connect exquisite compositional balance and solid, tight-knit ensemble interplay.”- Kerilie McDowell
Ballet Review on Nine Doors (Read HERE), "When I interviewed her about Nine Doors, her recent solo work presented by World Music Institute in association with Asia Society at National Sawdust, a venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I told her, “You’re kind of scary.” I was referring to her understated, but overwhelming, genius. In Nine Doors she speaks and sings in eight languages, plays seven instruments, and dances in an astounding flow of organic expression moving from the exquisite, refined movements of Javanese court dance to an earthy, ribald storytelling performance." - Karen Greenspan, Ballet Review Summer 2018 issue.
I Care if you Listen on Nine Doors at Resonant Bodies Festival 2018 (Read HERE), "Shyu showcased her abilities on an impressive array of instruments including the Taiwanese moon lute, Korean gayageum and soribuk drum, Japanese biwa, and piano. This diversity made each movement wonderous and engaging, as the audience was ushered between disparate sound worlds. But most impressive is Shyu’s ability to channel her voice into so many different registers. At times, her voice rang with a full-bodied and resonant quality, and at others it dissolved into a kind of mournful and devastating howling. Shyu is a master storyteller, and captivated the audience with every movement, word, and sound." - Tristan McKay
Sydney Morning Herald on Nine Doors + Song of Silver Geese duo with Australian drummer Simon Barker, Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival, Australia (Read HERE), “Often soft and intimate, her singing always [has] a singular clarity, and could be as bright and innocent as a child's eyes….Above all Shyu has the rare ability to make cutting-edge art that seems homespun and quite devoid of artifice.” - John Shand
NPR's Fresh Air (Listen HERE), "Shyu's music is intensely personal. Nothing sounds quite like it...Jen Shyu's music operates in some unpatrolled border zone, blurring lines between folk song and art song, the traditional and the avant-garde, Western and Eastern, between waking consciousness and dream logic. Her album, "Sounds and Cries Of The World" is no drive-by encounter between musical cultures, no cherry picking of exotic licks. This is research and experience, absorbed and reimagined." - Kevin Whitehead
Wall Street Journal, on Pi Recordings' Sounds and Cries of the World, 2015 (Read HERE), "Along with the five languages Ms. Shyu speaks here is an unspoken one—the improvised lingua franca of jazz’s most accomplished musicians that connects her influences and animates her ambitions..Remarkable as her achievements with her ensemble are, Ms. Shyu is especially riveting on that track ["Song for Naldo"], simply strumming her lute and singing. Her voice, a wonder of technical control and unrestrained emotion, tells a story dotted with well-researched facts and wild poetic allusions. She claims both as her truths."- Larry Blumenfeld
New York Times "Popcast" with Jon Caramanica (Listen HERE)"Jen Shyu, whose new album “Sounds and Cries of the World” comes out this week, is an improvising singer of great accomplishment who leads a band including some of the best improvising musicians in the United States: the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, the violist Mat Maneri, the bassist Thomas Morgan, the drummer Dan Weiss." - Ben Ratliff
New York Times (Read HERE), “I suppose there have been other people like JEN SHYU: disciplined vocalists who speak and sing in multiple languages, work with improvisation and composition and movement, feel at home both with quick-change rhythmic patterns and meditative long tones, use narrative poetry as a basis for songs, and use a two-stringed Taiwanese moon lute in a New Yorkish and vanguardish jazz context. I just can't think of any right now. Instead of thinking about her categorically, you can focus on how beautifully and generously she uses sound.” - Ben Ratliff
