Trumpet virtuoso Cuong Vu sees music as a path to reconnection in an alienated world
Acclaimed musician and educator will draw on an innovative career in collaboration when he joins local outfits Tom Wherrett Trio and Malleus Trio at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival
Cuong Vu
Tom Wherrett. Photo by Natalie Sorenson
Cuong Vu joins the Tom Wherrett Trio at Tyrant Studios on June 30, and the Malleus Trio at Ocean Artworks on July 3, as part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival
CUONG VU DOESN’T have a lot to say about the music he’ll be playing with two very different local trios during this year’s edition of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. He’ll be crossing the border from his Seattle home with an open mind, but readily admits that he hasn’t done a deep dive into what his impending bandmates in either the Tom Wherrett Trio or the Malleus Trio have been getting up to on this side of the great divide.
“I just like the music,” the trumpet virtuoso says, “and I think I can contribute something.”
Jazz festival co–artistic director Cole Schmidt is of the same opinion. He’s responsible, Vu says, for these two improvised pairings, which arose out of a similarly spontaneous meeting in Austria just slightly less than a year ago.
“We ran into each other last summer at the Saalfelden Jazz Festival,” Vu explains. “He was a guest there, and the director of that festival wanted to come to the Vancouver festival. We’re friends, so I said ‘Hey, I’ll come up and hang out with you for a few days.’ And then Cole said, ‘You want to play some gigs?’
“I said ‘I might as well. Sure!’ He sent me links to the two outfits I’m playing with, and I thought I could make good music with them.”
That’s a reasonable assumption. When it comes to the Tom Wherrett Trio, which includes drummer Dan Gaucher and bassist Karlis Silins in addition to guitarist Wherrett, Vu has already shown that he plays well with electric six-string stylists. The Vietnam-born, American-raised trumpeter spent several years touring and recording with jazz-guitar superstar Pat Metheny, appearing on the latter’s Grammy Award–winning Speaking of Now and The Way Up. More recently, Vu coaxed amazingly extroverted and inventive performances out of the always subtle but often self-effacing Bill Frisell on a pair of his own releases: Ballet, a tribute to jazz composer and arranger Michael Gibbs, and Change in the Air.
The Malleus Trio, which includes drummer Ben Brown, tenor saxophonist Dominic Conway, and bassist Geordie Hart, is more oriented toward the acoustic side of modern jazz, but Vu’s gorgeous tone and melodic sensibility seem equally well matched to these fine local musicians.
And while Vu is well known for altering the sound of his acoustic trumpet with electronic effects, he’s increasingly finding unamplified ways to explore all of the many timbres that can be coaxed from his breath, a coiled brass tube, and a mouthpiece.
“One thing influences the other,” he explains. “It may be like the ‘chicken or the egg’ thing. I started playing with effects just because they were around and I was like, ‘Hey, I want to try this!’ I thought it would help me get into more groove-oriented music or rock music; you don’t really hear trumpet in that stuff because it’s kind of silly unless it’s Earth, Wind & Fire or Tower of Power, things like that. So when we were doing it I realized that, wow, I don’t like the way it’s altering my sound at all. I don’t like sounding like a synthesizer or a bad guitar or whatever. And that’s when I got into the electronic delays, because the delays let me play these weird sounds that I was stumbling onto, because I was interested in avant-garde music and pushing forward that way. Those sounds and approaches started to affect how I was using the delays—dealing with data-collecting and putting it together in a coherent way—and in turn that influenced how I went back to playing acoustic.
“I think that’s how it works.”
Just as important as Vu’s credentials and chops, however, is the spirit he’ll bring to his improvised jazz-festival meetings.
“I’m interested in doing things that are different—and trying to be new, I guess,” he says. “Well, maybe not ‘trying to be new’, but pushing for stuff that’s not rote, not following the much-treaded path. I thought they [the two Vancouver trios] were doing that too. It’s pretty clear that they have the type of music where I could get in there with one rehearsal and figure out what to do and how to contribute to whatever they’re doing.”
Zoom out from the particulars of Vu’s two Vancouver concerts, and it’s apparent that the trumpeter’s willingness to engage is rooted in a larger world view, and this is something that he’s more ready to discuss at length. As chair of jazz studies at the University of Washington’s School of Music, Vu sees himself as both a teacher of technique and a kind of life coach, concerned with imparting to his students an awareness of music as a singularly powerful way to connect with others, especially in an era when our gadgets—and the powerful forces behind them—are trying to divide and conquer.
“I feel like maybe what’s going on is made worse by people being so trapped in their own world because all they have to do is be part of social media,” he says. “That takes out the whole reason for us to be together, which is to survive together. When we do that, we have to depend on each other, and we have to kind of celebrate each other—and that’s part of being human. If there was more of that, then we’d be so much better—and that’s why art is important.
“People are starting to find that out,” he adds.”They’re starting to realize that more and more, and it feels like it’s our job to remind people ‘Hey! Check this out! Drop everything; let’s go down to the beach and look for creatures.’ Stuff like that. All the wonders of the world! Once we touch somebody like that, they will have been changed, and they’ll try to do that for other people. And, for me, being a teacher is the most important thing in my life right now, outside of my family and my health. It’s like ‘Man, let’s get these kids to figure stuff out!’” 
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