CODA MAGAZINE

May, 1988

ASIAN AMERICAN JAZZ FESTIVAL
The Asian American Art Museum
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
April 22 & 23, 1988

(excerpt)

The second evening of the festival opened with a solo violin set from New Yorker Jason Hwang. Balanced on the edge of jazz' and a highly personal music, Hwang worked with rhythmic patterns creating foundations for harmonic exploration. He has a broad language and the technique to express it. He stretched his sound to the limits, sometimes of listenability. Hardly in need of justification, Hwang's music did not fit into a conventional jazz' structure. (I mention this because the event was billed as a Jazz Festival") He did however work in the realm of improvised music, which is an important element of jazz. His music was an evocation of colors and emotions in a wide spectrum from tenderness to the volatile, piecing fragments, creating dances, in a dazzling, poetic way.