"Sharp versus continuous. Forgotten and abiding. Diatonic into toneless. Juxtaposition defines “Dream Walk,” a 12-minute spree from the violinist Jason Kao Hwang’s latest album, “Sing House,” due May 5. His quintet jostles from occasional moments of unison playing into wide-burning group improvisations. Like much in Mr. Hwang’s catalog, this stuff feels both intensely personal and oddly mythic. The performance ends slowly, gravity setting in, a wafting sense of peace in lieu of resolution." - Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times The geological irregularity of Hwang’s construction is entirely deliberate. His procedures incorporate strategies kin with assemblage & with subtractive sculpture—the subtractive an especially decisive agent in the music’s aura of transverbal mystery. Pruning intensifies the phenomenological presence of what one hears, while the echoes & shadows of what’s been removed never fully disclose themselves. What bends & transforms around all of this is the “group mind” plasticity specific to this particular gathering of musical actors. For Jason Kao Hwang, music stages that active imagination within which “we imagine who we are.” He’s chosen throughout his musical work to engage & make relationship with his total sound history, & in that, (to paraphrase James Baldwin’s conception) accept & achieve his own temporal identity. It’s hard to find anything more valuable to admire in an artist (or in a person) than an accomplished willingness to do just that. - patrick brennan, composer & saxophonist (excerpt from liner notes) The music is a house, with the score’s quintessential melodies, rhythms, harmonies, and textures offering rooms in which musicians extemporaneously sing. In this dramatic architecture, the unique voice of each musician is empowered to individually interpret and also, transcend interpretation to become an originating spirit that is inextricably unified to the composition’s destiny. This is how music grows greater than the imagination of one to become a meta-language of memories, dreams, and hope. Though this is the first CD of Sing House, my new quintet, we have worked together in various constellations for over ten years. Andrew and Ken were in my past quartet EDGE, and current octet Burning Bridge, project VOICE, and string orchestra, Spontaneous River. Steve is also a member of Burning Bridge. Chris and I have performed as a duo and with Steve’s bands. My thanks to all of them and patrick brennan, for their friendship, creativity, and artistry. - Jason Kao Hwang