[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, and I'm about five feet from a vibraphone. Yuhan Su's musical career began in her native Taiwan, followed by a degree at Berkeley College of Music in 2008, and eventually brought her to New York City where she's become a leading player on her chosen instrument, the vibraphone. Her last album, 2018's City Animals, drew Inspiration from the sounds and heartbeat of New York City. Her latest album is Liberated Gestures, a collection of songs that celebrate freedom from constraints, whose centerpiece suite was inspired by the mid-20th century abstractionist, Hans Hartung.

Yuhan Su will be at the Jazz Gallery this Saturday, December 16th. First she joins me here in WNYC's Studio 5. Welcome to the studio. Thank you for coming in. With it, joining her is pianist Matt Mitchell. Matt, thank you for being here as well.

Matt Mitchell: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: You're going to begin with a performance, right?

Yuhan Su: Yes.

Alison Stewart: All right. Let's hear.

[MUSIC - Yuhan Su: She Goes to a Silent War]

Alison Stewart: That was Yuhan Su with Matt Mitchell on piano. The name of the piece is, She Goes to a Silent War. While you were playing, Yuhan, I took a little video and I put it on our Instagram @allofitwnyc, and the story, so people won't want to see what the vibraphone looks like [laughs] so we have a sense of it. If you wouldn't mind sharing, I know it sounds like a very basic question, but what is the difference between a xylophone and a vibraphone or a marimba? Can you explain the difference?

Yuhan Su: Yes. The vibraphone is made by the metal, so you can hear it's a metal sound, and the special part there is an electric, it trigger the-- there's a fan below the keys, so it will create an interesting sound. Then marimba and xylophones, all wooden keys.

Alison Stewart: Wooden keys.

Yuhan Su: Yes, and xylophone, the register is higher. Marimba has a lower register.

Alison Stewart: How did you first discover and begin to play the vibraphone?

Yuhan Su: Oh. I studied percussion since I was a kid and piano as well. I played in orchestra in a classical percussion a lot. Until I was in college, I got into jazz, and then-- Gary Burton and Chick Corea was on tour in Taiwan at the time. I was like, "Wow, vibraphone. I also want to learn how to improvise everything." I started to get into more a vibraphone playing.

Alison Stewart: You've said in an interview a couple years ago, this is a beautiful quote, "Vibraphone is an instrument full of possibilities. It can be used in different positions of a band and create diverse effects for the music." What are some of the different roles a vibraphone can play in a band?

Yuhan Su: For example, like in a jazz ensemble, it can function like a home instrument, play melody, and you can also join the rhythm section, play chords, for example, I hold fours mallets, so I can actually play the harmony. Then at the same time, it's a percussion instrument, so it also has a rhythm to it.

Alison Stewart: Do you compose on the vibraphone or do you compose on the piano when you're creating a piece? Where do you go to make it?

Yuhan Su: Both actually. A lot of time on piano just because there's more things I can cover on the piano, but sometimes I write on the vibraphone just to feature certain technique so I can try out on the vibraphone first.

Alison Stewart: Are you able to use anything you learned from those early days of studying percussion, classical percussion?

Yuhan Su: Yes. A lot actually, because for the classical percussion study, there's a lot of-- I play a lot of 20th-century composers, new music, so it's a lot about dissonant sound and complicated rhythm. Then I think this kind of sound is always inside of my brain. Then that really apply to my composition, I think.

Alison Stewart: My guess is Yuhan Su. The name of her album is Liberated Gestures. What is a Liberated Gesture? Where did you get the name of the album from?

Yuhan Su: The title actually is coming from the exhibition I saw in Paris of the painter Hans Hartung. His works is well known with very dramatic lines, very bold color, intuitive decision. Then also he overcome a lot of difficulties in his life, and then he transformed that into his art. There's different period of time he was creating different things because of some limits that he has. I was very inspired and then I started to create the music and then this whole album around this idea.

Alison Stewart: You're going to play another piece for us, a song called Character. You wrote on the liner notes of the album that Character has no backstory.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: How does it fit into the rest of the work, or is it just its own thing?

Yuhan Su: For example, this song you will hear there's a lot of very interesting meters, rhythm. Then, for example, we as an improviser, we have to try to find the freedom inside of that. How to improvise in certain limitations and then to find the freedom inside of it.

Alison Stewart: This is Yuhan Su, this is Character, Matt Mitchell on piano.

[MUSIC - Yuhan Su: Character]

Alison Stewart: That was Yuhan Su on vibraphone and Matt Mitchell on piano. Yuhan Su has a show at Jazz Gallery on December 16th. Yuhan, this is really a basic question. What brought you to the United States to play jazz?

Yuhan Su: [laughs] I came here for studying jazz because back the time in Taiwan, there was not enough education of jazz. Nowadays it's much better and then the jazz is in the college. There's department for that. In my time, I really need to come here to learn jazz. Also, to learn the culture and everything.

Alison Stewart: Then how did you get to New York?

Yuhan Su: Oh. [laughs] After I graduated from Berkeley, actually, I didn't think so much. I just feel like New York everybody knows it's the city of jazz, so I was like, "Yes, I'm going to try all that." [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Hey, Matt. Can I bring you into the conversation?

Matt Mitchell: Sure.

Alison Stewart: All right. For you as a pianist, what's interesting about collaborating with someone playing the vibraphone?

Matt Mitchell: Oh, I actually have always loved the vibes. I got into playing jazz when I was a young teenager, and one of my favorite albums was Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, which has Bobby Hutcherson playing vibes on it. I've always just loved the sound probably because it's a cousin of the piano and its ability to play chords, its percussion nature. I just like the way its ability to sustain, too. You can get a nice wash of sound going, but you can get some sharp textures going, too. It's just, I like the sound. I like playing with people who do interesting things with it, which Yuhan is definitely one of those people.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask, what does Yuhan do that's unique? We're going to talk about you like you're not here.

[laughter]

Matt Mitchell: We had been in touch for several years and then only about three, four years ago, we started playing. Our schedules never quite lined up. I was always just super busy, but she had been hitting me up to play and then we finally did and I was like, "Oh, I felt stupid for having taken that long to actually help make it happen." Because, to me, she's a really interesting improviser. I always feel like what she plays is the right for me, the right combination of surprising, but also something familiar that hits a familiar spot for me that I want to always hear when I hear people improvise. It hits the perfect ratio of things that I value in an improvising musician.

Alison Stewart: Yuhan, what is going through your mind when you're improvising? What's going through your mind, or is nothing? Is it just a feel, a feeling?

Yuhan Su: Let me see. I think in a more abstract way, it's combining with memories and the present, the moment I feel at the time.

Alison Stewart: There's a song that tells us that high-tech pros and cons was inspired by a premature death of an iPhone, one of your songs.

[laughter]

Yuhan Su: That was the first song we played.

Alison Stewart: That was the first song you played?

Yuhan Su: Yes. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: How did that experience turn into a song, though? That's so interesting.

[laughter]

Yuhan Su: It's a funny story. I always feel like a lot of my song, it's about me losing money.

[laughter]

Yuhan Su: This one is because nowadays, we all need a phone, iPhone. Then I figured, for example, iPhone, they have certain amount of years is stay alive. Anyway, there's a period of time I was still paying monthly for this old phone and it already died, so I need to get a new one. Then I was paying for the dead phone and the new phone at the same time. I was like, "This is really ridiculous. I have to write a song about that."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Inspiration comes from unusual places. You're going to perform one more song for us as we end the show today. What are we going to hear?

Yuhan Su: Yes. We're going to play She Goes to a Silent War.

Alison Stewart: This is Yuhan Su.

[MUSIC - Yuhan Su: She Goes to a Silent War]

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much.

Yuhan Su: Thank you.

 

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