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Jo-Yu Chen: Rendezvous: Jazz Meets Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & More
ByBut a discussion of labels and boundaries is necessary when addressing her album Rendezvous: Jazz Meets Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & More.
First, some background: Chen has established a top-level jazz career since moving from her native Taiwan to New York City at age 16 to study at Juilliard. She released her first album, Obsession (Sony Music) in 2011, followed by Incomplete Soul (Sony Music, 2012). Both are notable works, but a major artistic step forward came with the release of Stranger (Okeh, 2014), followed by Savage Beauty (Sony Music, 2019). These are more than notable; they are excellenta pair of releases that moved jazz into the forefront. Boldness, brashness even, came into play. Her classical training slipped into the backseat with the shift of her desire to express herself without the restraints of labels and boundaries.
Rendezvous: Jazz Meets Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & More is another shift, a deep look back at her beginning in her classical studies, colored with an intrepid assurance drawn from her work in the jazz world.
Classical music is cerebral; jazz is visceral. A broad general assertion, one with many exceptions on both sides of the semicolon, and one that does not speak to the countless grey areas (boundaries are not thin black lines), but also one with roots in the truth. The classical masterpieces that Chen explores here could easily suffer from a freezing in time, becoming relics offering no wiggle room, no veering from the written scores, no allowance of flexibility in the revisitations of the work. Chen and her trio matesbassist

Chris Tordini
bass, acoustic
Tommy Crane
drumsWhat is there ot say about the works of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and Ravel that we find here? Their art is time-tested. They are recognised geniuses. And Chen? She is at the top of her game in this boundary-crossing, bursting-with-life effortsomething of a genius herself in her spirited interpretations of music coming from the classical side of the porous musical boundary.
And the musicher musical embrace of the mastersreaches beyond the boundaries to sound right. ">
Track Listing
Beethoven – Symphony No. 5 / Piano Sonata Moonlight; Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker: Dance of the Reed Flutes; Beethoven – Sonata No. 8, Pathétique 2nd Movement; Tchaikovsky – Swan Lake; Prokofiev – Romeo and Juliet: Dance of the Knights; Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition: The Old Castle; Prokofiev – Piano Concerto #2; Ravel – Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte.
Personnel
Album information
Title: Rendezvous - Jazz Meets Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & More | Year Released: 2025 | Record Label: Sony Music
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