Yuhan Su: Liberated Gesture
Sunnyside Records

Vibraphonist Yuhan Su, alto saxophonist Caroline Davis, pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Marty Kenney, and drummer Dan Weiss demonstrate such great chemistry on Liberated Gesture, one can only hope the release won't be the quintet's only one. That Su, a Taiwanese native based in New York, formed the Liberated Gesture quintet in late 2021 suggests the strong possibility that the outfit will extend past this superb recording, her fourth album overall. In keeping with its title, Liberated Gesture is, in part, about breaking free from constraints and scoping out new territory. Like any jazz artist striving to reconcile formal composition with improvisation and individual expression, the goal, in Su's words, is “to find liberation from within given limitations,” and to that end the five execute her compositions with fearless yet still controlled abandon.

A number of things inspired the material, from modern-day annoyances like the too-short life-spans of iPhones (“Hi-Tech Pros and Cons”) to the physical shock of jumping into an ice-cold lake in eastern Taiwan (“Naked Swimmer”). Su also drew for inspiration from real-world figures, in the titular suite Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hartung, for exemplifying creative freedom over the course of a seventy-year career, and elsewhere writer Joan Didion, whose The Year of Magical Thinking captured the period following the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne. Both figures embody for Su courage and resilience, qualities she aspires to instill into her own life and work.

As a player, Su takes her rightful place amongst the other jazz vibraphonists currently making waves. Her high-energy acrobatics maximize the exhilarating effect of the performances, her swinging solo in “Siren Days,” the title evoking the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic when sirens filled the air and panic spread around the world (half of the album material was written in Taiwan and New York as the pandemic raged), characteristic of her playing. While she challenges her partners with charts that are polyrhythmic, complex, and intricately woven (look no further than the shape-shifting scene-setter “Hi-Tech Pros and Cons”), they're exceptional players capable of navigating their way through the material.

They've all established themselves as first-rank musicians in other contexts and do the same here, Mitchell endlessly inventive (see his adventurous exploration in the freewheeling “Character”) and Kenney and Weiss fabulously locked in throughout; consider, for example, how aggressively the two animate the driving septuplet pulse of “Didion.” The suite begins with the solemn balladry of “Arc,” its slow tempo tailor-made for the resonant gleam of Su's vibes and Weiss's cymbals, before advancing through the cubistic metrics and almost Cuban-styled dazzle of “Tightrope Walk” and high-flying, bassist-spotlighting “Hartung's Light.” Elsewhere, bowed vibraphone helps convey the chill of the lake in “Naked Swimmer,” and, with Kenney on electric bass, the dizzying “Hassan's Fashion Magazine” takes the album out on a groove that's as slinky as it is punchy.

Singling out Davis risks downplaying how equally critical the playing is of Su's other partners, yet there's no denying the fleet-fingered saxophonist imposes herself particularly memorably on the set (even if she only plays on five of the album's ten tracks). That it's also she who recites Su's striking poem on the evocative mood piece “She Goes to a Silent War” likewise heightens the impact Davis makes on the recording and helps further distinguish Liberated Gesture from the standard instrumental jazz release. Hearing poetry recited in a jazz context is always a welcome sound.

December 2023