Roulette Intermedium
Jen Shyu performing here piece 'Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses' at Roulette in April 2021
"More and more I've wanted to tell my story, as who I am," the singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu says in this episode of The Checkout. "And also really thinking about others who might look like me, or feel, perhaps, othered or marginalized."
That impulse, extending both inward and outward, informed Shyu's audacious and deeply personal new album,
Zero Grasses: Ritual For the Losses, released this spring on Pi Recordings. A meditation on mortality and identity, it bears a dedication to her father, Tsu Pin Shyu, who died unexpectedly at his home in Houston in 2019.