* En anglais uniquement
Linda May Han Oh (aka Linda Oh) is a double and electric bassist, bandleader, recording artist, and composer living in Harlem, New York. Her playing style on both instruments is fluid, intuitive, and vastly creative, whether she's playing bracing modernist music, exploratory post-bop, jazz-funk, or swinging straight-ahead in a hard bop setting. Her innate ability to seemingly stretch time signatures without losing her sense of lyricism or pronounced groove helped establish her as a first-call session and touring bassist. She led her own trio on her leader debut, 2009's independently released Entry, and did a five-year stint with trumpeter
Dave Douglas between 2011 and 2015. She signed to his Greenleaf Music label for her own
Initial Here (2012) and
Sun Pictures (2013). While with the
Douglas group, Oh worked with pianists
Art Hirahara and
Fabian Almazan, saxophonists
Jim Snidero and
Tineke Postma, and played on drummer
Terri Lynne Carrington's award-winning
Mosaic Project in 2015. That same year she issued her own Serial. Oh followed with an abundance of session and live work and released her fourth album, Walk Against Wind, in 2017. She played on outings with
Douglas and
Joe Lovano and appeared with pianist
Florian Weber's group on 2018's
Lucent Waters. In 2019 she released her acclaimed
Aventurine and toured the globe with the
Pat Metheny Quartet. The group's travels resulted in the 2020 studio album
From This Place. In 2021, she collaborated on
Uneasy, a trio project for
ECM led by pianist
Vijay Iyer with drummer
Tyshawn Sorey.
The youngest of three girls, Oh was born in Malaysia to parents of Chinese descent who emigrated to Perth, Western Australia. She began playing piano before moving first to bassoon and then to electric bass. Her parents were pleased when her older sisters chose medicine (they both became doctors) but were less than thrilled when she informed them she wanted to become a jazz musician. They supported her decision nonetheless.
In 2002, Oh began playing the upright acoustic contrabass at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, where she graduated with first-class honors. In 2003, Oh was a James Morrison Scholarship Finalist, and a year later, an International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) Sister in Jazz. In 2006, she emigrated to New York and two years later won the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer’s Award. She completed her master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music in 2008, where she studied with
Jay Anderson,
John Riley,
Phil Markowitz,
Dave Liebman, and
Rodney Jones. The same year, she played on
Jon Irabagon's
Outright album and Lithuanian saxophonist Kęstutis Vaiginis' Unexpected Choices. In 2009, she issued her debut, Entry, leading a trio with trumpeter
Ambrose Akinmusire and drummer
Obed Calvaire. The recording received accolades from NPR and various other outlets. Oh gigged whenever she could, leading her own bands and appearing with others. Over the next couple of years, she recorded with Thomas Barber's Janus Bloc,
Sarah Manning, Bastian Weinhold, and others. She also started going to a gym to build up her arm strength on the double bass. The reason? She played too many clubs where she couldn't mike her bass. The result was a change in tone and physicality in her command and phrasing.
In 2010 she received the Jazz Journalist's Award for Up-and-Coming Artist of the Year, and the award of No. 1 Acoustic Bass Rising Star in the Downbeat Critics' Poll and took second place at the BASS2010 Competition in Berlin. In 2011, Oh made the first of her recordings with the
Dave Douglas Quintet and
Fabian Almazan Trio.
Douglas' Greenleaf Music label released her sophomore recording,
Initial Here, in 2012 with
Almazan, drummer
Rudy Royston, and saxophonist
Dayna Stephens. Oh continued working live and in the studio with the
Douglas and
Almazan bands, as well as with saxophonist
Jim Snidero on 2013's
Stream of Consciousness. Her own
Sun Pictures, featuring drummer
Ted Poor, guitarist
James Muller, and saxophonist
Ben Wendel, was released the same year on Greenleaf Music and was acclaimed as the work of a young master.
Oh branched out, working across the jazz spectrum both live and on recordings with
Michael Dease,
Greg Osby,
Joe Lovano, and
Kenny Barron to
Chris Dingman,
Melissa Stylianou, and
Avishai and
Anat Cohen. She appeared on
Terri Lynne Carrington's widely celebrated 2015
The Mosaic Project: Love and Soul. She also appeared with
Douglas and
Lovano at the Monterey Jazz Festival, a recording of which was released on Blue Note as
Sound Prints. She played on
Art Hirahara's
Libations & Meditations and marimba master
Gwendolyn Dease's
Beguiled (alongside bassist
Rodney Whitaker) the following year. Oh released her fourth album, Walk Against Wind (her first using her full name,
Linda May Han Oh) in 2017 on the innovative Biophilia label, whose signature is offering gorgeous, 20-paneled digipacks and digital download files in a variety of formats -- everything is recyclable. Oh played electric and double bass and sang with her sidemen
Almazan,
Wendel, and percussionist Minji Park, with guitarist Matthew Stevens and drummer
Justin Brown each guesting on a track. The album was universally celebrated, prompting a critically acclaimed tour. The record also placed at number 22 on the jazz charts. (This is especially noteworthy for a jazz album whose contents could only be digitally downloaded.)
In addition to playing dates with her own band, Oh joined guitarist
Pat Metheny's quartet alongside drummer
Antonio Sanchez and pianist
Gwilym Simcock.
Metheny, who has a long history of playing with some of the greatest bassists in the genre, told Jazz Times: "She has all the things you want: great time, a really big and yet dynamic sound, a fantastic harmonic sense and real facility on the instrument...She has an indescribable presence in the music that is really hard to find. She owns the space around the notes she plays in ways that really add up to something more than the notes and sounds. There is a transcendent thing happening there that is really what makes music music."
Oh made her
ECM debut in 2018 on pianist
Florian Weber's
Lucent Waters, alongside trumpeter
Ralph Alessi and drummer
Nasheet Waits. She also worked with
Douglas' group again on Brazen Heart, a memorial tribute to his brother. The following year, Oh released
Aventurine for Biophilia. Its 14 original compositions featured her leading a quartet that included pianist
Matt Mitchell, drummer
Ches Smith, and saxophonist
Greg Ward, as well as a string quartet. In 2020, her tenure with
Metheny resulted in the widely acclaimed studio album
From This Place for Nonesuch. The following year Oh joined pianist
Vijay Iyer's trio with drummer
Tyshawn Sorey on
ECM for
Uneasy. ~ Thom Jurek