Fred Ho

Asian-American Jazz & Improv

by Ludovico Granvassu
June 5, 2019

As jazz was born where cultures converged, it's not a surprise that it is the most adaptable form of music. An art form permeable since its very inception to musical traditions from other continents. This week we focus on the contribution of musicians that approached jazz and improvised music benefiting from the wider perspective afforded to them by the exposure to not only American culture but also the traditions of the places of origin of their families, which hailed from ...

Fred Ho: We Refuse To Be Used And Abused

by Peter Madsen
May 30, 2006

When I began playing jazz over 30 years ago I felt that it was music leaning its sounds in the leftist direction. Being in the jazz world gave me the feeling of being in a secret underground, a place outside the all-American white-bread Christian society that was always telling me what to believe and how to behave. To not ask too many questions, to not break the everlasting capitalist rules and regulations, to feel superior as a man with a ...

Fred Ho Tribute in New Haven on September 17

Source: Michael Ricci
September 6, 2014

Fred Ho Tribute to be Presented in New Haven By Jacob Epstein New Haven, CT: The Hartigan Epstein Brown Quartet, an ensemble that creates and performs works inspired by World Cultures and Jazz, will present a tribute to their colleague and collaborator, Fred Ho. Also joining the performance will be Librettist Ann T. Greene and Baritone Saxophonist Benjamin Barson, long time collaborators and colleagues of Mr. Ho and special guests associated with his work. The presentation will be hosted at: ...
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In Memoriam: Fred Ho

Source: Michael Ricci
April 15, 2014

"Fred Ho's style is a genre unto itself, a pioneering fusion of free-jazz and traditional Chinese music that manages to combine truculence and delicacy with such natural ease that it sounds positively organic." —Larry Birnbaum, Down Beat. After 8 years of a grueling cancer war, Fred Ho peacefully passed away the morning of April 12th, 2014. He was in his Greenpoint, Brooklyn home, surrounded by friends and loved ones. Fred Ho was a one-of-a-kind revolutionary Chinese American baritone saxophonist, composer, ...
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Saxophonist & Social Activist Fred Ho Chronicles Transformation into "Radical Cancer Warrior"

Source: Chris M. Slawecki
September 5, 2011

DIARY OF A RADICAL CANCER WARRIOR: Fighting Cancer and Capitalism at the Cellular Level by Fred Ho; Foreword by Magdalena Gómez; Introduction by Cynthia Franklin “It's not every day 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 “Pioneering." —Los Angeles Times “[Ho] achieves his cross-cultural goals with skill, grace, and humor...[he] has an audacious integrity." —The New York Times Civilization as we ...
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Fred Ho Gets Very Serious on "Big Red!"

Source: Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards
August 6, 2011

Fred Ho is a composer-instrumentalist-bandleader with a complex attitude toward his Chinese-Asian ancestry, the homeland and its contemporary historical stance, the Afro-American culture from which his music in part derives, and commercial culture in general and of America in particular. I won't begin to try and describe that attitude, except to say that his music reflects the multiplicity of factors that go into who he is today. Big Red! (Innova 794), the latest in a series of albums by his ...
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Fred Ho and the Green Monster Big Band: "Year of the Tiger" a Reason to Celebrate

Source: Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards
August 2, 2011

Fred Ho's Green Monster Big Band is something else, no doubt about it. Take some of the hottest players around (Bobby Zankel, Salim Washington, Stanton Davis, Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson, and on from there), put together wacky but convincing big band charts covering everything from “The Johnny Quest Theme," Michael Jackson, Hendrix, interesting original charts, what sounds like Chinese social realism, all with a seriousness that at the same time has a kind of irony that typically is part ...
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The Jazz Session #157: Fred Ho

Source: Michael Ricci
April 6, 2010

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Celebrating Cal Massey: Fred Ho and Salim Washington Concert on April 22

Source: Michael Ricci
March 24, 2010

CELEBRATING CAL MASSEY with Fred Ho & the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and Salim Washington & the Brooklyn College Big Band Thursday, April 22, 7 pm, Gershwin Theater Brooklyn College, Campus Road and Hillel Place FREE to Public This concert features a rare performance of the gifted composer and trumpeter Cal Massey's piece, The Black Liberation Movement Suite. Presented by the H. Wiley Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music and The Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium ...
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How Does Music Free Us? Afro-Asian Revolutionary Concepts in New Music

Source: All About Jazz
March 1, 2010

A discussion and reading by author/composer/activist Fred Ho

In this talk, Chinese American composer, baritone saxophonist, scholar-writer, producer, matriarchal revolutionary socialist and aspiring Luddite Fred Ho explores the role of music, both in imagining a new society, and in its applied role in foreshadowing or prefiguring a revolutionary society and a transformed humanity.

Fred Ho has created a dozen operas, multimedia suites and martial arts ballets/manga music/theater epic works, recorded 15 albums of his music, and authored and edited/co-edited five ...
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Fred Ho at Harvard, November 4

Source: MassJazz: Jazz in Massachusetts
November 1, 2009

Fred Ho, a one-of-a-kind revolutionary Chinese American baritone saxophonist, composer, writer, producer, political activist and leader of several music ensembles, is in concert with the Harvard Jazz Band on November 4 at Lowell Hall, 17 Kirkland Street, in Cambridge.“Fred Ho's style is a genre unto itself, a pioneering fusion of free-jazz and traditional Chinese music that manages to combine truculence and delicacy with such natural ease that it sounds positively organic," wrote Larry Birnbaum in Down Beat Magazine.
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Alfred Howard and K23 Orch Final Show 12/05 in S.D.

Source: JamBase
November 26, 2008

Last Alfred Howard & the K23 Orchestra Show: 12/05 in San Diego

Alfred Howard & the K23 Orchestra by Larry Mills Over the years we've had the good fortune to watch Alfred Howard & the K23 Orchestra develop into a damn fine band. In fact, I (your humble Editor Kayceman), knew Al from another life. We met at the record store Al worked at when I too lived in San Diego. He hadn't started the ...
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