Jon Jang

Jon Jang (; born March 11, 1954) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. Of Chinese ancestry, he specializes in music which combines elements of jazz and Asian musics, and is known for musical works exploring international as well as Asian American social justice struggles.

Career Jang holds a B.Mus. degree in piano performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (1978), where he studied African American music with Dr. Wendell Logan, who Jang describes as a "mentor and a father figure." From 1999 to 2001, Jang toured with Max Roach as part of the Beijing Trio, which included performances at London's Royal Festival Hall and the Berlin Jazz Festival. He has been awarded two commissions from Cal Performances and has performed four times under the organization's auspices. He has received composition commissions from the Library of Congress and the Kronos Quartet, and in 2000 received the Creative Capital Award in the discipline of Performing Arts.

Music and politics In the early 1980s, Jang began releasing recordings as a bandleader that included Are you Chinese or Charlie Chan? (1983, RPM) and The Ballad or the Bullet? (1988, Asian Improv), the latter referencing Malcolm X's famous speech "The Ballot or the Bullet."

Jang has said his music during much of the 1980s paralleled the Asian American movement, in which he was also engaged as a political activist. Young Asian Americans were also inspired by the artistic-political synergy of the Black Arts Movement, and as an organization, AIR drew inspiration directly from earlier Black artist collectives such as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) of Chicago, the Black Artist Group (BAG) of St. Louis, as well as the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA) of Los Angeles.

Reparations Now! Concerto for Jazz Ensemble and Taiko was one of Jang's first major works of this period, referencing the Redress and Reparations movement. Inspired by Horace Tapscott and his Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Jang named the performing ensemble the Pan Asian Arkestra. Tapscott taught Jang about "passin' the magic" onto future generations through the Ark and the music. Additionally, Jang learned from Black mentors such as Max Roach, Amiri Baraka, Horace Tapscott, and Wendell Logan that, as James Baldwin noted, "this music begins on the auction block." As Jang and Francis Wong have described, 1988 marked a turning point both for the Asian American movement and their own work as artists and activists:"The Redress and Reparations movement was a civil rights victory for the 1980s. One of the first major works after Are You Chinese or Charlie Chan? was Reparations Now! Concerto for Jazz Ensemble and Taiko. From 1980 to 1988 we were informed by the movement. After that, the Asian American movement was re-defined."

Though often written about by critics as primarily a jazz musician, Jang has also composed notated works for classical performers, and in addition to numerous jazz influences, has cited composers such as William Grant Still as models for his approach to memorializing history and exploring political struggles through musical composition. Jang's 2007 Chinese American Symphony, premiered in 2007 by the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, is a symphonic composition addressing the history of Chinese immigrant railroad workers in the late 19th century.

As a public intellectual, Jang has given a number of presentations at universities and colleges throughout the U.S. such as Columbia University, Stanford University, Brown University, and UCLA on topics such as "Traditions in Transformation: The Musical Language of Jon Jang," "Sounds of Struggle: Music from the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s to the Asian American Movement of the 1980s," and "One Day American, One Day Alien: Black and Brown Artists Who Made the National Anthem Their Own." In 2012, Jang was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr./Césár Chavez/Rosa Parks Visiting Professorship at the University of Michigan.

Discography As Leader or Co-Leader As Ensemble Performer