The mother of a three-year-old son, Oh created and teaches a number of lessons for Apple’s BassGuru iPhone and iPad app. She is also a devoted environmentalist.
‘Musically dangerous’: Fountain Collective’s avant-garde experimental jazz
‘Musically dangerous’: Fountain Collective’s avant-garde experimental jazz
“Linda May Han Oh is one of the finest musicians playing the bass today possessing a beautiful sound, lyricism, erudite harmonic sense and profound [sense of] time,” says Mark Dresser, one of the world’s foremost solo bass performers. “As well, she’s a gifted composer and collaborator.”
Trumpet innovator Steph Richards, a teaching colleague of Dresser’s at UC San Diego, is equally enthused about Oh. “Linda is a singular, deeply creative jazz master – solid as a rock, a heavy cat and beautiful musician,” Richards says.
Oh has embarked on a tour to promote her most recent album, last year’s wonderfully absorbing The Glass Hours.
Two of the musicians who perform on the album – her pianist husband and Portuguese singer Sara Serpa – are on the road with Oh in her current band. The group also features saxophonist Greg Ward and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr.
Each brings the precision, finesse and freewheeling spirit that underpins Oh’s alternately spacious and knotty compositions.
“They are all very giving and generous people, and they are all very tenacious!” Oh says. She then happily sang the praises of each of her bandmates, individually.
With music that treads the line between improvisation and composition, anything can happen and it’s always different
Generosity and tenacity are attributes that underpin Oh’s work, both as a consistently resourceful composer and as a commanding but flash-free player on both acoustic and electric bass.
Whether leading her own ensemble or performing as a member of bands headed by Metheny, Iyer and her other widely celebrated collaborators, Oh always strives to serve the music.
She performs with a striking combination of skill and craft, imagination and power, nuance and deeply felt emotion that makes even her most intricate compositions and her edgiest instrumental passages inviting.
“My goal is to be fully, 100 per cent, in the moment,” the 39-year-old bassist says. “When you do that, you’re encouraging the listener to do the same. And with music that treads the line between improvisation and composition, anything can happen and it’s always different [in concert].
“It’s a really special moment that can never be re-created. So, being 100 per cent in the moment is what I strive to be. All the stuff we do in the practice room is to get to that comfort level to be on stage and ready.”
Oh’s album The Glass Hours clocks in at around 75 minutes but does not contain a single extraneous note or inflection. Inspired by the fragility of life on an increasingly fraught planet, its 10 pieces are by turns contemplative and charged, airy and dense, pensive and joyful.
How a Thai ‘poor kid with a dream’ became international jazz man and author
How a Thai ‘poor kid with a dream’ became international jazz man and author
“I try not to give too many instructions, because the musicians I’m playing with have a pretty good intuition about the possibilities,” Oh says. “Anything that’s said might be more penetrating to the energy of certain sections to help the story of the song and its narrative.
“Much of it is written and built into the songs, With the improvisational sections, I genuinely have trust in the other musicians.”
It is common for bands to write, record and release a new album, followed by a tour to promote it. Oh reversed that approach for The Glass Hours, working the music up on the stage with her band at one of New York’s most storied jazz clubs before entering the studio.
Oh’s debut album as a band leader, Entry, came out in 2009. It was released – as were her next two albums – under the name Linda Oh. Starting with her third album, 2017’s Walk Against Wind, she has recorded and toured using her full name, Linda May Han Oh.
“May-han is my Chinese name and that’s what the name I was born with,” Oh explains. “When my family immigrated from Malaysia to Australia, my parents thought – as a way to assimilate – we should all be given names that were more European and easier to pronounce.
“I totally understand their reasoning. I just wanted to add my Chinese name, which is big part of me, into my professional name.”
Oh was just three years old when her family moved to Perth, Australia. Her two older sisters, May-chin and May-sian, both played piano. Within a year, so did she. At the age of 11, Oh took up clarinet and bassoon, the latter of which she played in the jazz orchestra at the Western Australian Conservatory of Performing Arts.
“There’s something in that music that still resonates with me,” says Oh, who fondly recalls meeting Peppers’ bassist Flea in Los Angeles in 2013. She was touring at the time with saxophonist Joe Lovano and trumpeter Dave Douglas as a member of their band, Sound Prints.
“He said: ‘Where are you from?’ I said: ‘Australia.’ He said: ‘Me, too.’ and I said: ‘I know; you were born in Melbourne!’ Then he told me he was there to see [Shorter band member] Brian Blade – ‘the best drummer in the world’.”
In 2019, Oh became an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music. Her extensive experience as a bassist, composer, band leader and concert and recording artist provides her students with invaluable real-world lessons.
I’m very fortunate to have a community where I feel like being able to take your child on the road – especially as a woman musician – is getting a little easier with certain things
Oh cites her time as the bassist in the band of piano great Geri Allen as pivotal in helping her chart her artistic path.
“That was something Geri was all about in the time I spent with her,” Oh says. “She would ask me: ‘Is this something you want to do and are serious about?’ – as opposed to: ‘Is this something you feel you need to do because someone [else] said so?’
“Asking students the questions that I do often opens up their minds, in the sense they see other possibilities they haven’t thought about. And it gives them more incentive and resources to draw from further down the road. Because people will want to play with them because they play well and work well with other musicians.
“So, I encourage them to think out of the box.”
Oh and her husband are the parents of a young son, Nilo. He has travelled with the couple on their concert tours of Europe and is with them for their current tour.
“He just turned three and we figure that this is the time we can take him with us [on tour], before he starts school,” Oh says. “At the moment, it’s worked out really well. What I love about the music community is how other musician parents have helped us out. At the North Sea Jazz Festival [in Holland], the wife of our saxophonist, Greg Ward, looked after our son.
“We’re lucky we find babysitters when we need them and that generous people help out backstage at our concerts.
“I’m very fortunate to have a community where I feel like being able to take your child on the road – especially as a woman musician – is getting a little easier with certain things. So, I’m hoping more musician parents decide to do this. It’s definitely not easy, but I’m glad my son gets to see the world with us.”