Jon Jang Biography
Jon Jang has followed his own path of creating music which has become "two flowers on a stem," a metaphor expressing the symbiotic relationship of his cultural identity and musical aesthetics as an American born Chinese. During the past twenty-five years, Jon Jang’s works chronicles and brings to life the Chinese immigration experience in the United States. His works also pays homage to the legacy of African American music and social justice. The Ford Foundation in New York recently selected Jang as one of five mid-career artists to receive a Visionary Artist award for his contributions
On April 28, 2007, Jon Jang’s Chinese American Symphony premiered in Sacramento. Commissioned by the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra and the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the work pays tribute to the Chinese who built the first transcontinental railroad in United States. Jon Jang gives a musical voice to a history that has been silent. Unbound Chinatown –A Musical Tribute to Alice Fong Yu gave its world premiere at the 25th San Francisco Jazz Festival.
Jon Jang gives a musical voice to a history that has been silent. His other works include Paper Son, Paper Songs, Island: the Immigrant Suite No. 2 for the Kronos Quartet and Cantonese Opera singer, Tiananmen!, Reparations Now! For Jazz Orchestra and Taiko, to name a few. Jang also composed the score for the dramatic adaptation of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Women Warrior. Commissioned by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the work was also staged at Huntington Theatre in Boston and the Center Theatre Group of Los Angeles.
In June 2000, Jon Jang and James Newton composed and performed When Sorrow Turns to Joy – a Musical Tribute to Paul Robeson that was commissioned by the Cal Performances and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. At a performance at Dartmouth College in 2003, Paul Robeson Jr. gave his highest praise for the work. The last performance was in Paris in April 2004 to commemorate the anniversary of Paul Robeson’s famous speech at the World Peace Conference in 1949.
In 1989, Jon proposed the idea to reconceptualize the National Anthem to Max Roach. As a result, SenseUs –Rainbow AnthemS premiered at Davies Symphony Hall in 1990 featuring Max Roach, Jon Jang, John Santos, Sonia Sanchez, Victor Hernandez Cruz and Genny Lim.
In 1995, Jon and Dr. Billy Taylor curate Crossover series at the Asia Society of New York exploring the relationship between African American music and Chinese music in a one week filled with performances and residency activities.
Jang has recorded with Max Roach, James Newton, David Murray and Maxine Hong Kingston. His ensembles have toured at major concert halls and music festivals in Europe, Canada, China and the United States. Jon was the first musician from San Francisco to perform at the Arts Alive Festival in South Africa in 1994, four months after the election to end apartheid. Before Max Roach’s retirement in 2003, Jon toured with him as part of a trio in Zurich, Berlin, Milan, and the Royal Festival Hall in London in 2001.
Jon dropped out of University of California at Berkeley and began
piano at the age of 19. Working as a busboy and a gardener, Jon raised
enough money to buy his first piano at age 20. With only one and half
years of study, he flew to New York to audition to various music schools
and was accepted to all of them. He chose the Oberlin Conservatory
of Music because of it fine reputation as a music school and liberal
arts college. He was also awarded a full scholarship. After three
years of study at Oberlin, Jon Jang received a B.Mus. degree in piano
performance.
Jon Jang lives in the San Francisco Nob Hill area near Chinatown with
his wife Joyce and daughter Mika, who is in her seventh year at Alice
Fong Yu Alternative Elementary and Middle School, the first public
Chinese language immersion school in the country named after the first
Chinese American school teacher in San Francisco. Jon was a Visiting
Fellow at the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University,
as well as a visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley and UC Irvine. He is
featured as a composer and public intellectual in Deborah Wong’s
book, Speak It Louder – Asian Americans Making Music published
by Routledge of New York and London.