Vincent Hsu’s album ‘Music for the River Jazz Suite: The Spirit of Love River & Mississippi River’ is due out October 20, 2023 via Truth Revolution Records
Truth Revolution Records is thrilled to announce the release of bassist and composer Vincent Hsu’s Music for the River Jazz Suite: The Spirit of Love River & Mississippi River. Due out on October 20, 2023, this innovative new work finds common ground between two seemingly disparate great rivers: Love River of Hsu’s hometown of Kaohsiung, Taiwan and the Mississippi River, integral to the birth of jazz. Fused with Afro-Cuban undertones, of which Hsu has played extensively for most of his career, Music for the River Jazz Suite is truly a singular and unique work of cultural and musical fusion.
Hsu’s fourth album as a bandleader allows listeners to hear Hsu’s compositions brought to life by a large ensemble for the very first time. Music for the River Jazz Suite captures the raw thrill of the concert atmosphere, recorded live at Taiwan’s Weiwuying Recital Hall. Breathing life to these deeply emotive and soulful works, Hsu is joined by saxophonists Hank Pan, Shen-yu Su, and Jonas Ganzemüller, trumpeter Wen-feng Cheng, violinist Yu-chen Tseng, clarinetist Chieh-an Fan, trombonist Yi-chun Teng, guitarist Shih-chun Lee, pianist Musaubach, drummer Kuan-liang Lin, and conga player Carol Huang.
In 2002, Hsu moved to New York City to study with jazz titan Cecil McBee. Hsu remarks “[McBee] brought me to buy my first bass when I was 25 years old, ever since then, jazz has become a huge part of my life.” Hsu found deep, impactful musical connections with Latin jazz greats Andy and Jerry Gonzalez, Luis Perdomo and Zaccai Curtis. Over the course of the past two decades, Hsu has refined a remarkable compositional voice that fuses jazz and Afro-Cuban music with his Taiwanese roots.
The seeds for this incredibly creative project were planted over 15 years ago, when Hsu visited New Orleans for the first time. It was 2007, and Hsu took a trip on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. “I got to thinking about how jazz has been played on the boat since the 1920s. I also saw how the movement and the waves of the river share the same kind of motion of jazz music when it comes to the swing feel,” he shares. Observing that the Mississippi River passes through so many important musical cities such as Nashville, Memphis, Clarksdale, and New Orleans, he began composing works inspired by the river itself. Eventually, this led him to draw parallels to Love River, a 7.5 mile river known as the spine of Kaohsiung, his birthplace in Taiwan. “I wanted to connect the stories of my upbringing with my musical influences.”
