Chien Chien Lu
Classically trained in contemporary percussion in her native Taiwan, vibraphonist Chien Chien Lu moved to Philadelphia in 2015 to study jazz at University of the Arts with veteran vibist Tony Miceli. Lu soon immersed herself in Philly’s jazz scene, scoring a residency at Chris’ Jazz Café and performing with local favorites like Vertical Current—most notably at a 2016 tribute to Roy Ayers, a jazz hero she’d honor again on her debut album. In 2018, she joined A-list trumpeter Jeremy Pelt’s quintet, gigging regularly at New York City’s Smoke and Jazz Standard, featuring as a sideman on that year’s Jeremy Pelt: The Artist, and touring extensively with the band through the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan. Playing in Pelt’s band raised Lu’s profile and also introduced her to elite bandmates like the fusion-minded bassist Richie Goods. “I started asking her about what she’s doing with her music,” Goods told Downbeat in Dec. 2020. “Hearing her night after night—just tearing it up—I said, ‘You need to do a record.’” Goods not only blessed Lu’s 2020 debut recording, The Path, he also produced it—in addition to playing bass and arranging the two most recognizable standards on the album, Bill Evans and Miles Davis’ “Blue in Green” and Bronislaw Kaper’s “Invitation.” Goods is not the only member of Pelt’s band to lend his services here; drummer Allen Mednard, percussionist Ismel Wignall, and Maestro Pelt himself can all be heard over the course of a 12-tune debut that combines originals with covers, jazz with classical, avant-garde with traditional, West with East. “The music of this album is the result of the unique experience of merging two cultures, Taiwanese and American, which sometimes compliment and sometimes contradict each other,” explains Lu in notes written for the album. Compare Lu’s arrangement of Roy Ayers’ “We Live in Brooklyn Baby,” an amalgamation of jazz, funk, and soul, with “Blossom in a Stormy Night” and “The Path,” nods to classical Taiwanese and Chinese forms, respectively, for evidence of Chien Chien’s inclination towards musical world mixing. It’s an album, says Lu, that contains “…chaos and peace, questions and statements, the powerful and the delicate and, most of all, the in-depth search for the bigger meaning and truth.”
Photo Credit: Brian Doherty
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