 (c) Jason Jem |
Press Reviews "[Ho] achieves his cross-cultural goals with skill, grace, and humor. The music merges Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus with Chinese instruments and vocal styles from Western opera, Chinese opera, and jazz; for a fusion that never seems forced. Mr. Ho's act of East-West fusion has an audacious integrity. Jon Pareles, The New York Times |
Recent Press Quotes on Fred Ho
“For twenty years now Fred Ho and his Afro Asian Music Ensemble have been defending the turf where the personal and the political slam headfirst into the maelstrom of new jazz…a fiercely imaginative baritone saxophonist and composer…”-The New Yorker, November 4, 2003
“[Monkey Part 2 is] a glorious surprise…dramatic, flexible, and visionary.” -Jazz Times
“…pioneering…the music is filled with surprises…and astonishing array of dramatic moods, textures and emotions.” -Los Angeles Times
“Politics proud and defiant…an uncompromising stance bursts out of every track…with up-front energy and immediate impact.” -BBC Music Magazine (England)
“Composer-arranger Fred Ho could teach Wynton Marsalis a thing or two about making social statements through music…While Marsalis…is dry, academic treatise…[Ho’s music] is a stirring outpouring of intense emotion…vibrant, vital, and passionate.” -Perry Gettelman, The Orlando Sentinel
“Fred Ho and the Afro-Asian Music Ensemble offer live jazz as it hasn’t been seen in 30 years while introducing Asian touches that define another side of his talented and many-faceted group. The range of musical directions Ho and company use and their smoothness, sincerity, and undisputed talent make them a live event that should not be missed.” -Robert Hambretch, EAR Magazine
“…Ho’s skill and sensitivity …combines seemingly disparate elements into a dramatic, highly entertaining and integrated whole…not just jazz, and not some freakish hybrid, but sophisticated modern music for the concert hall which will stand up nicely against anything in the contemporary classical repertoire.” -Bill Tilland, Option Magazine
“A stirring baritone saxophonist and provocative composer…” – Chicago Reader
“Fred Ho is the exception to the rule. [Ho] is reigniting the all but snuffed jazz tradition of political activism.” -Bill Shoemaker, Jazz Times
“This new and quite astounding recording [i.e., The Underground Railroad to My Heart, Soul Note] of the ‘under-appreciated’ Chinese American activist Fred Ho and his Afro Asian Music Ensemble proves one more time, that, after Charlie Haden and Horace Tapscott, American leftism is a seedbed for composers who don’t feel compelled to chase after a pretty melody. Fred Ho brilliantly succeeds in combining Chinese tradition with jazz. I won’t attempt to describe the result. Try it: you’re in for a ride!” –Jazz Magazine (France)
“It’s not every day that you run into a musician who joins a protean range of talents—as a composer, saxophonist, writer and bandleader—with a commitment to Marxist ideology.” –The New Yorker
“The term genius means little once it’s applied not only to gifted performance artists but also to a truckload of ostentatious oddballs and social-cause fashion plates. No superlative is credible after it’s prostituted into inanity. Still, every once in a blue moon, someone actually fills the bill…[Fred Ho] evincing firebrand artistry…clarity of thought and expression…expansive scope…stand[s] at the forefront of the genre as a genuine trail-blazer…” –Dwight Hobbes, Insight News (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
