Jon Jang Biography
For over two decades, Jon Jang has developed his own musical language based on a concept he calls paper son, paper songs.
Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Chinese created the “paper son” slot system where Chinese could claim US citizenship to stay in this country by purchasing false birth certificate papers from a Chinese father who had US citizenship. The surname of Jon’s grandfather was Woo and he became a “paper son” by purchasing the legal citizenship documents from a father named Jang.
Inspired by this Chinese clever method, paper songs embraces Jon Jang’s concept of Americanizing Chinese folk music. The melodies look Chinese on paper (music notation) but sound “American.”
Jon Jang gives a musical voice to a history that has been silent. A majority of his works represents a chronology of Chinese American history in San Francisco. Commissioned by the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra and Oakland East Bay Symphony, Jang composed The Chinese American Symphony, a work that pays tribute to the Chinese who built the first transcontinental railroad in United States. The work premiered in 2007 in Sacramento, California and in 2008 in Oakland.
Other works include Unbound Chinatown (2007), Paper Son, Paper Songs (2006) Island: the Immigrant Suite No. 2 for the Kronos Quartet and Cantonese Opera singer (1995) inspired by the poetry of Chinese immigrants who were detained at Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco during 1910-40, the score for the dramatic adaptation of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Women Warrior (1994) and When Sorrow Turns to Joy – A Musical Tribute to Paul Robeson (2002) inspired by Robeson’s collaboration with a Chinese choir in 1941.
Jang has recorded with Max Roach, James Newton and David Murray. His ensembles have toured at major concert halls and music festivals in China, South Africa (1994), Europe, Canada and the United States. In 2001, Jon toured with Max Roach as part of a trio in Zurich, Berlin, Milan and the Royal Festival Hall in London.
Jon Jang received a mid-career visionary artist award from the Ford Foundation in 2006. He joined Bernice Johnson Reagon as two of four Visiting Fellows at Stanford University in 2007 as part of the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts. Jang has received commissions and grants from Creative Work Fund (1999, 2006), San Francisco Arts Commission (1995, 1998, 2002, 2006), Meet The Composer New Residences (2000-2003), Chanticleer (1999), The Library of Congress (1999), Rockefeller MAP Fund (1997, 2002), Creative Capital (2000-2003), Meet The Composer (1995), Kronos Quartet (1995) and NEA Jazz Composition Fellowship award (1995).
During June 1995, Jon Jang and Dr. Billy Taylor served as curators for the Asia Society of New York’s Crossover series featuring the collaboration of Asian music in jazz giving performances at the Studio Museum of Harlem, Hunter College and the Asia Society auditorium.
Recognizing Asian American's contributions in the field of arts and entertainment, Jon received the Golden Ring Award along with Chow Yan Fat, Joan Chen, Maxine Hong Kingston and Wayne Wang in 1995. In the Downbeat Annual International Critics Poll, Jang has been recognized in the composer category (1996-98). He has also been nominated for the Alpert Award in the Arts (1995, 2000 and 2002).
Jang’s concept of simulating the sound of the yangqin, a Chinese
hammered dulcimer, through the piano is featured on the Asian American
Orchestra’s Grammy Award nominated recording of Duke Ellington
& Billy Strayhorn’s work The Far East Suite on Asian Improv
Records, a label that Jang co-founded with Francis Wong in 1987.
Jang is featured as a composer and a public intellectual in Deborah
Wong’s Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music published
by Routledge of New York and London, as well as in Amy Ling’s
Yellow Light - the Flowering of Asian American Arts published by Temple
University Press. Jang contributed the article, Long Road Home: the
Creation of the Chinese American Symphony, for the Chinese Historical
Society of America Journal to be published later this year.
Jang began piano at the age of 19. After two years of study, he was
accepted as a piano performance major at the Oberlin Conservatory
of Music and received the Lydia Lord Davis scholarship. He graduated
with a B.Mus. degree in piano performance in 1978 and later became
the first Conservatory alumnus to be awarded the Distinguished Achievement
Award from Oberlin College in 2001.