Jason Kao Hwang / Sang Won Park: Local Lingo

Through the 1990s, violinist Jason Kao Hwang mined an exploration of East Asian music filtered through the improvisatory language of downtown New York. Primarily with his Far East Band—with Sang Won Park on the stringed ajeng and kayagum and Yukio Tsuji on the flutelike shakuhachi, later augmented by Joe Daley's tuba—Hwang created an avant-garde take on the immigrant experience, representing the so-called melting pot of New York City with ingredients that still retain their individual flavors.

Hwang and Park are now continuing their exploration of Eastern improv as a duo, having performed at the 2007 Vision Festival and now with their first duo CD. But where the Far East Band had a cross-cultural feel, Local Lingo is distinctly Asiatic and with more of a smear of abstraction. The opening piece, "Listen, is built around a call-and-response, with Hwang stating a slow melody line and Park repeating it, bowing his strings down to a detuned growl.

"Ari Rang is a traditional Korean song (a populist movement is even pushing for it to be made the national anthem) plaintively sung by Park and used as a springboard for delicate variation. Over the course of the five tracks, the duo displays a beautiful restraint, slowly engaging (and disengaging) themes with a remarkable compatibility. While the different tunings and scales of traditional Eastern music can sound alien to Western ears, here the increasingly global language of joint improvisation bridges the divide.

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