Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Jason Kao Hwang & Karl Berger: Conjure

Jason Kao Hwang & Karl Berger: Conjure

By Mike Jurkovic
February 6, 2020
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There is an adventurer's appeal when two free thinkers just pick up mid-stream and let the river carry them. Without label or structure constraint, life-preservers and the chronic happenstance which bars so many back from reaching beyond themselves, music emerges shaded by emotional time, humor, awareness, and mutual respect for each other's untapped potential.

So we have Conjure, a meeting of the minds of eighty-four year old vibraphonist/pianist

Karl Berger

vibraphone
1935 - 2023

" data-original-title="" title="">Karl Berger (from the free school of

Ornette Coleman

saxophone, alto
1930 - 2015

" data-original-title="" title="">Ornette Coleman,

Don Cherry

trumpet
1936 - 1995

" data-original-title="" title="">Don Cherry,

John McLaughlin

guitar
b.1942

" data-original-title="" title="">John McLaughlin) and sixty-ish violinist/composer

Jason Kao Hwang

composer / conductor
b.1957

" data-original-title="" title="">Jason Kao Hwang excavating and illuminating the shadows, corners, and recesses of the muse. Sparse yet harmonically rich with particle melodies which shimmer in and out of mid-air existence, the duo form restless, hypnotic, and meditative moments which coalesce into a totally immersive whole. On "Prophecy" Hwang's elongated lines massage Berger's increasingly sharp, jutting passages. Berger leads "Silhouettes," his sense of miniature begging Hwang to tell the longer tale. To which Hwang grandly obliges.

Other vapor-like free radicals include "Beyond Reach," "Vanishing Roots," (Hwang's viola pizzicato falling like warm rain) and Conjure's longest track, the slow, modulated curve of "Water Finds Water." It's all about head-space, air-space, and the space between two like-minders in mid-stream, the stream opening to the river and the river to the ocean without restraint, the new morning sky meeting the music, hovering.

Learn more about our star rating system

Track Listing

Prophecy; Silouettes; Beyond Reach; Vanishing Roots; Faith; Below Zero; Water Finds Water; Arise.

Personnel

Jason Kao Hwang

composer / conductor

Jason Kao Hwang: violin and viola; Karl Berger: piano and vibraphone.

Album information

Title: Conjure | Year Released: 2019 | Record Label: Flying Panda Music

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