Jon Jang (; born March 11, 1954) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. Of Chinese ancestry, he specializes in music which combines elements of jazz and Asian musics, and is known for musical works exploring international as well as Asian American social justice struggles. Career Jang holds a B.Mus degree in piano performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (1978), where he studied African American music with Dr. Wendell Logan, who Jang describes as a "mentor and a father figure." Jang has recorded many albums as a composer-bandleader and pianist, performing with Max Roach, David Murray (saxophonist), James Newton, Francis Wong, and Fred Ho, among numerous others. Jang lives in San Francisco, California. He has recorded for the Asian Improv and Soul Note labels and has performed at leading music venues including Alice Tully Hall, the Beijing Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the Walker Art Center, as well as San Francisco venues such as the Chinatown Music Festival. From 1999 to 2001, Jang toured with Max Roach as part of the Beijing Trio, which included performances at London's Royal Festival Hall and the Berlin Jazz Festival. He has been awarded two commissions from Cal Performances and has performed four times under the organization's auspices. He has received composition commissions from the Library of Congress and the Kronos Quartet, and in 2000 received the Creative Capital Award in the discipline of Performing Arts. Music and politics In the early 1980s, Jang began releasing recordings as a bandleader that included Are you Chinese or Charlie Chan? (1983, RPM) and The Ballad or the Bullet? (1988, Asian Improv), the latter referencing Malcolm X's famous speech "The Ballot or the Bullet." Jang and Francis Wong first founded the record label Asian Improv Records to support work by Jang, Glenn Horiuchi and other Asian American artists, and in 1987 created Asian Improv aRts (using the same acronym, AIR) as a non-profit organization that continues to support both Asian Improv Records and other educational and community activities in order "to produce, present and document artistic works that represent the Asian American experience." Jang has said his music during much of the 1980s paralleled the Asian American movement, in which he was also engaged as a political activist. Young Asian Americans were also inspired by the artistic-political synergy of the Black Arts Movement, and as an organization, AIR drew inspiration directly from earlier