Max Roach - drums
Jon Jang - piano
Jiebing Chen - erhu
Max Roach's rich odyssey ushered earlier in his historically important and phenomenal work with the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown,exploded later on - expanding his creative thrusts with a broad terrain of musics, individuals and groups. Reflecting his interfacial span, his diverse collaborative projects have included those with Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, the Kodo Drummers of Japan, Anthony Braxton, the Boston Pops, Spike Lee, the Alvin Alley and Bill T. Jones dance companies, writers Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and playwrights Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neill, and Sam Shepard.
A Prolific composer, Roach has created works for soloists, choruses, orchestras, television, film, theater and dance... and for his own constellation of groups (M.R. Quartet, the Double Quartet, the Uptown String Quartet, the percussion ensemble M Boom and the So What Brass Quintet).
Surely one of the most celebrated artists of our time, Roach is recipient of a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation in recognition of his distinguished contributions to American cultural life. Among numerous other international awards, Hall of Fame inductions and honorary doctorates in Music and Fine Arts, he has an extensive discography. Easily one of the most recorded artists of this century, he is a two-time winner of the French Grand Prix du Disque.
A Chinese-American, Jon Jang was born in Los Angeles. An alumnus of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Jang has been active on the scene for the past decade as a pianist, composer, and a leader of a variety of ensembles. During this time frame, he has been acclaimed with distinguished awards, honors, grants and commissions via a wide spectrum of national/international medis, institutions, special performance events, and international polls.
These modes of recognition are comprehensible accompaniments to the path-finding artistic peaks and strides he has made as a gifted complete musician. His notable original works are rich admixtures of cultural influences and sounds. Specifically, he has integrated traditional Chinese folk songs into varied contemporary music. Indeed, Jang is critically hailed as a pioneer, as innovator and a worldly leader in his fields of endeavors. Earning gainful audience respect and enthusiasm, he has performed in Europe, South Africa, China, Canada and the U.S. His latest of three Beijing visits was an invitation to perform his works at the Beijing International Jazz Festival in 1997. Jang was a focus of interest because of his model blending of the traditions of Chinese and African American musics. Jon Jang was the perfect catalyst to precipitate this recording project of the Beijing Trio.
Jiebing Chen is recognized as the world's foremost virtuosic exponent of the erhu. Shanghai born, she began performing at age 6 and graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music with high honors. In 1988, the highest honor given by the Chinese government was presented to her – as a "National First Rank Performing Artist." She was soloist with Shanghai's Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra and Dance Theater Company. On a scholarship, she finished at the State University of New York in Buffalo where she earned her M.A. degree. Since then, she has performed with symphony orchestras in Moscow, Hungary and Taipei among a multitude of other venues.
As for recordings, she has recorded with banjoist Bela Fleck and flutist James Newton; she has also performed with the prominent trio of pianist Dr. Billy Taylor and the Jon Jang Sextet. During the course of the past fifteen years, she has produced the largest catalogue of erhu recordings extant in China and the U.S. In 1996 she had a Grammy Award nomination for "best world music album" (with Bela Fleck and Visha Bhat). Currently she resided in the San Francisco Bay Area.
