For over three decades, Eyvind Kang has moved through musical worlds with the curiosity of a traveler and the rigor of a devotee. A longtime collaborator of Jessika Kenney and Bill Frisell, and a disciple of spiritual jazz violinist Michael White, his work has always been marked by a kind of patient listening. Riparian is his first solo instrumental album, and it arrives as something intimate and meditative, centered on the viola d’amore, an instrument with seven strings above and seven sympathetic strings below. Across two longform improvisations, Kang explores what he calls an “amphibious” approach: pizzicato-like particulate matter, the bow like flowing current, and somewhere between them, a hidden riverbed where one technique reveals itself inside the other. Recorded by Randall Dunn during the pandemic, the album captures Kang at a threshold where sound, ecology, and memory flow freely together, its unstruck resonant strings sounding what he describes as “a music of the spheres” that exists in the space between touch and body.
Riparian is out now on Kou Records.
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Let’s begin at the beginning. What are some of your earliest memories of sound or music? Were there particular tones, textures, or moments that left an imprint?
My uncle playing the piano. As a young kid, I used to look at his hands while he was playing, which was an amazing experience.
You’ve studied and worked across so many traditions over the years. Do you remember a moment when music first opened up for you as something more than form, maybe as something spiritual or ecological?
That’s just starting to happen these days.
You have also studied with Michael White, whose spiritual jazz work in the 1970s still radiates through so much contemporary practice. What do you carry forward from that time with him, not just musically, but in terms of how you approach listening or being in the world?
Thanks! I’ve been listening to Michael’s albums lately, especially Pneuma. I’d say his emphasis on healing and music, I’m working within that way of thinking.
You’ve long been a part of multiple intersecting musical communities: experimental, spiritual, academic, and underground. As an Asian American artist, how have you seen the reception or framing of your work differ compared to artists from Asia or non-Asian American peers?
I just appreciate if some people listen.
Do you feel like there’s still a lack of vocabulary, or maybe a lack of curiosity, when it comes to understanding the complexities of Asian American creative work, especially when it doesn’t conform to expectations or easy narratives?
For sure, this subject deserves a whole thesis. Starting with “Free Palestine”.
Riparian marks your first album dedicated entirely to solo viola d’amore. What drew you to this instrument, and how did your relationship with it shift during the process of making the album?
VDA is an alchemical thing with 7 strings above, 7 below. But since the resonant strings are positioned below the playing strings, you could look at it as an unstruck sound, like a “music of the spheres” which takes place in between the level of playing and the body of the instrument, rather than in outer space only.
You’ve described the dialogue between pizzicato and arco as like crossing a stream (I love this). Can you talk more about that metaphor and how it informed the shape or structure of these improvisations?
The way I think of pizzicato, it’s like particulate matter. Like sand, soil. If I string it together in a tremolo, it’s like dropping sand from your hands. The bigger or longer pluck bass drops are like the “gloop” sound that water makes when it hits against a rock in a small stream. On the other hand, the bow, the way I try to move it, brings a kind of flowing sound. The amphibious way of playing combines these two techniques. But you will find there is a hidden side where one appears in the other- for example, the bottom of a river, if it is close, like at the bank, and depending on if there are rocks and pebbles down there, will return to the plucking technique. It’s like visualization, and a kind of game. There are also random things like sandbars and an extremely funny image of a cat, which freezes when it is overwhelmed by a smell. The cat indicates a kind of modulation to minimalist music, i.e., long tones, but in a fun and vernacular way.
You’ve spoken about developing “ecomusicality” in your work. How do you define that term for yourself? And how does Riparian reflect or depart from that practice?
Listening and playing “with”, “as” or “to” or “for” nature or kin. Riparian is ecomusical on an intuitive level, on the “with” level. It’s a zeitgeist. Many of us are thinking that way. For example, I learned a lot from Maura Chen, an amazing artist and architectural designer, as she drew the Riparian album cover. She draws a lot of riparian imagery in her substack, drafting curbside. And she draws music too.
I’m really interested in this idea of improvisation as storytelling among like-minded friends, even when performed solo. What does that kind of imagined or remembered community mean to you when you play?
Solo music is collaborative, too. Because how did you learn to play? Who set you flowing? To quote Farah Jasmine Griffin’s book title.
There’s a sense that this music listens as much as it speaks. Do you think of silence or pause as a collaborator in your work?
The pause between phrases is definitely a friend. I would like it to be lengthy, without fetishizing it.
Has there ever been a tension for you between being seen and being misread? How do you navigate the act of being visible while protecting the integrity or mystery of your work?
Visibility as forthcomingness is fine, but not in the capitalist way.
And lastly to close, as always… What are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
I love these coyotes at night here in East LA.
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