Yuhan Su

In many ways, Yuhan Su represents the voice of the new generation of jazz musicians. Though she is firmly rooted in jazz tradition, her music is innovative, emotional, cerebral and most importantly, always lyrical. Her compositions and improvisations are uniquely hers, marked with an amalgamation of complexity, intensity and emotional resonance. And though she is capable of blistering technique, she always maintains a sense of melodic lyricism and wonder in her playing.

"It's been a pretty wild music journey. From learning J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schuman..'s music by playing piano, and getting highly inspired by Ravel, Debussy, Bela Bartok by studying composition, until my percussion study in the university and graduate school, John Cage, Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, Keiko Abe, Minoru Miki... a lot of great contemporary composers' music walks into my ear. And after all this, it's jazz! Jazz is like a conclusion for me. I mean I got to learn the skill to conclude things and then develop it in my own way. It's hard to explain the genre and style, but I just need to non-stop write and play. Let all this energy transform to something from here. Let imagination go farer and farer." Yuhan said.

Yuhan Su, a native of Taiwan, had her first exposure to music when she started learning the piano at the young age of seven. She developed a passion for percussion at the age of ten and while keeping up her classical piano studies. In 2001, Yuhan entered the Taipei National University of Arts, majoring in Percussion, and graduated in 2005 with a Bachelors’ Degree in Music. She continued to pursue her musical studies and in 2008, graduated with a Masters in Music, majoring in Percussion from the same university.

In 2001-2003, Yuhan joined the Ju Percussion Group II and performed throughout Taiwan. She also held several percussion recitals during the years when she studied at the Taipei National University of Arts. In 2005, she was invited to perform in Seoul, Korea as a member of TNUA percussion ensemble. In 2006, she collaborated with a media artist and received the First Prize in Live Performance in Digital Art Awards.

Yuhan devoted herself to writing original songs using the traditional dialect of her country and in 2007, won First Prize with her band in the Hakka Music competition, also receiving First Prize in the 2007 Original Songwriting Competition.

During her formative years studying in the University of Arts, she was highly inspired by all kinds of Art forms including drama, literature, dance, and contemporary fine arts. She grew to be aware of the importance of originality and the excitement required to create great art. She started to look for her own musical voice.

After she finished graduate school, she received a Scholarship from Berklee College of Music and decided in 2008, to enroll into Berklee, majoring in Performance. She has studied jazz vibraphone with virtuosos Dave Samuels and Ed Saindon, and Marimba with Nancy Zeltsman. In 2008, she received the prestigious award of “Most Active Mallet Player” from the percussion department. During her time at Berklee, she maintained regular performances with jazz and Latin jazz bands as well as her own quartet and sextet. She also served as Timpanist in the Video Game Orchestra (VGO) for well over a year.

In 2011, Yuhan graduated from Berklee College of Music. Currently, she is working on her original compositions with her group and preparing for her first album release. She is also very passionate about the marimba and devotes much of her time to writing solo and ensemble arrangements, and compositions for the marimba. She hopes her passion of writing music featuring the unique and beautiful sounds of mallet instruments will contribute to the repertoire and explore the possibilities of these instruments. Her marimba pieces are going to be published in the near future.

Currently, Yuhan plays with her own trio group "Yuhan Su Trio" around Boston and NYC. The trio is with a innovative instrumentation including vibraphone/malletKAT, guitar and drums.
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