LINDA MAY HAN OH EXAMINES THE SUBSTANCE, SUSTAINABILITY, AND SACREDNESS OF LIFE

PROMOTING AND NURTURING JAZZ IN CHICAGO

By Corey Hall

Return to your past. Now, isolate your present, or conjure your future and envision a child’s eyes opening to view everything new that day may deliver. And then…

Journey to a place where infinite spaces further your awareness, causing you to see/seize that moment where you accept your inclusion into this just realized reality, one inherently and forever larger than you…

These totally imagined, totally true visions form the foundation for “Aventurine,” the title track to Linda May Han Oh’s fifth album. Oh – whose quartet, alto saxophonist Greg Ward, pianist Fabian Almazan, and drummer Eric Doob performed at the 2022 Chicago Jazz Festival – recently dialogued with the JazzGram about Aventurine, the creation and the object.

“A lot of pieces on Aventurine were a slow burn over the past 10 years of reshaping and reworking these compositions,” said the Malaysia-born bassist/vocalist. “It was staggered in a sense that each piece was from a slightly different era. It symbolized an evolution within my past.”

By definition, aventurine is “an opaque, brown glass containing fine, gold-colored particles” (dictionary.com). Said Oh: “It is usually green, sometimes yellow, and sometimes other shades. What sets it apart is that people often confuse it with jade. What also sets it apart is this thing called aventurescence, which has this sparkly, shimmering quality, and that’s definitely something I tried to capture with the strings, particularly on the title track.”

Aventurine’s personnel includes a jazz quartet, with Ward, pianist Matt Mitchell, and drummer Ches Smith, augmented on select tracks by a string quartet and Invenio, a five-member choir.

When uniting both quartets on “Lilac Chaser,” Oh allowed the enjoyment she received from pianist Andrew Hill’s “Illusion,” another jazz and string quartet adventure, to be her catalyst.

“What I tried to do was have these interjecting moments of somewhat repetitive sections with strings interjecting with Matt, the soloist,” said Oh, who also described her song as an optical illusion. “It was almost like a question and answer. I wanted something quirky and left of center.”

For “Rest Your Weary Head (Part One and Part Two),” Invenio’s presence is added for color and atmosphere.

“Part one is a strange sort of lullaby that came to me when my niece, Lia, was just born. She was crying, and I was trying to lull her to sleep,” Oh recalled. “The second part is more of a trance, with the repetitive minimalism and the push and pull between the choir and the band.”

Oh also discussed “Deepsea Dancers,” which first appeared on her previous recording, Walk Against Wind. This song honors Izumi Uchida, her former manager, who suffered a fatal brain aneurysm. Thanks to Uchida’s encouragement, Oh started exploring Asian music and collaborating with Korean and Japanese musicians. A trip to Beijing, where she learned about Chinese melodies and storytelling, also helped.

“With ‘Deepsea Dancers,’ ” Oh explained, “I tried to capture one long string of melody in one tonality with some other colors added, like a little brushstroke.”

While challenging, Oh’s arrangements are logical and differ from traditional ways that song and solo structures exist, said Greg Ward. “Deepsea Dancers,” he added, has a novel and complex approach.

“The soloist improvises on top of the melody, while everyone else continues playing that melody,” Ward said. “That soloist goes one time through, and the next person picks up where the previous one left off, so there is a dialogue happening. It’s like a continuous solo. The idea is to communicate an entire story, or a complete solo, inside the ensemble together.”

Ward also enjoyed blowing his musical brains out on Oh’s arrangement of Bird’s “Au Privave.” “When you listen to it, it’s hard to tell that that’s actually the tune,” he said. “It was that tune, though, very much slowed down. It was a very fun arrangement to play.”

Oh and her quartet will return to Chicago for a hit at the Logan Center on April 15, 2023. The quartet will be playing music from Oh’s The Glass Hours, her next album. This will be her third release on Biophilia Records, owned by Fabian Almazan, her husband. Biophilia, she explained, is guided by sustainability and environmental awareness.

“We don’t sell CDs, because we don’t want to sell anything with plastic in it,” she said. “Instead, we have FSC-certified paper bifolios, and you still get 24 panels of artwork and liner notes. And all the inks are vegetable-based.”

When discussing The Glass Hours, Oh explained it like this: “It is a collection of works about the fragility of time and life, and what we choose to do with the hours we have together.”