Chinese-American guitarist Lawrence Ku has completed his latest album, titled Clarity,with bassist Fred Grenade and drummer Nicholas McBride. The album is composed of nice tracks, eight original and one arrangement, combining improvisational concepts with a diversity of musical sensibilities, such as jazz, rock and funk.

"I've been playing with different bands and jazz and pop artists over the past seven, eight years. The new album is a combination of influences from the musicians I've worked with and the music I've been listening to," says Ku. "And the material that I've written for the trio has developed over the course of the last few years into the sound you hear on the record."

The last piece of the album is the title track Clarity,which is the shortest piece in the album about three min and 14 seconds. Ku says that he composed it in a couple of hours and though it's a simple piece, he wants to make a statement with the song, which speaks for the new album.

"I do have a tendency to write longer, more complex or cerebral songs. But recently, especially with the tracks on Clarity,I'm approaching the music a little differently, trying to find more depth in simplicity. As I get older, I've found that simple things also have great depth and meaning, the title tracks is probably the biggest example of that, Clarityis just a short eight-bar melody" he says.

The opening song, titled Send-Off,is about departure. The dynamic sound, as Ku says, marks the beginning for the album, which "to me is like the start of an exciting journey into the sonic world of the record".

Goodtime Speedlove,a song delivered over a heavy back-beat groove, gets its name from a sweater worn by a waitress Ku met in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, a few years ago. "Our waitress' sweater said 'Good Time Speed Love'. It was like four words strung randomly yet beautifully together. To me it sounded like the name of a dashing super spy and I thought what a cool name for a song it would make, so when I was writing the track, I was thinking this could be a soundtrack for said super spy movie. It was perfect!" Ku recalls.

The trio also pays tribute to Israeli-born guitarist Oz Noy, who is known for incorporating a wide array of styles into his own work, such as funk, rock, blues, and jazz, with a song, titled Tip of the Hat.

Other highlights include a new arrangement of the Miles Davis classic Boplicity,from his 1956 album collaboration with Gil Evans, Birth of the Cool.The original style is a laid back swing but in the Lawrence Ku Trio's interpretation, it becomes funky and modern.

"It's a mix of some mature materials blended with great melodies and beautiful improvisations. Lawrence Ku trio is bringing great live music atmosphere to their living room or anywhere the fans are," says bassist Grenade on the new album. Grenade is from the island of Mauritius and since 2007, he moved to Shanghai and has been playing in the local music scene.

The trio will launch a tour next year in support of the new album.

"This album would be less jazz and more fusion but it depends on your own interpretation and perspective. There are definitely a lot of spaces for improvisation in Lawrence's music," McBride says. The drummer is from Australia and lived in Shanghai from 2002 to 2020. Now, he lives in Taipei. McBride contributed one original track in the new album, titled Tamarama, named after Tamarama Beach, located in eastern Sydney, Australia. McBride describes Tamarama as "one of my favorite places on the planet", the song was inspired by the music bars along the beach that play reggae all day long. "The reggae chill groove seemed to suit the current sound and vibe of the band," McBride says.

"The name of this album is indicative of our own musical evolutionary journey. I feel as musicians we have more clarity about who we are musically now than 15 years ago so I guess you could say Clarityis a culmination of the band's previous work and our own experience as musicians until now," he adds.

Ku has been playing in trio format since his early days in Beijing in the late 90's and there have been many versions of this band. For McBride, who first played with Ku at a jam session in Beijing on his first trip to China in 1998, the current sound of the trio has emerged naturally and "this music is the result of Lawrence's personal performance experience. He's reaching a new audience," McBride says.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Ku's early childhood dreams of becoming a rock star gradually shifted toward jazz and composition as he pursued music degrees in San Diego and Boston.

In 1997, Ku came to Beijing to learn Chinese, where he soon made friends with local jazz musicians, such as bassist Huang Yong, pianist Xia Jia and saxophonist Liu Yuan."The jazz scene in the capital then was small but burgeoning. I can still remember riding a bicycle from the western part of the city to the eastern side of the city to play in jam sessions with my friends every weekend at the Beijing CD Cafe. It was so much fun back then, we were all performing and learning as we went," Ku recalls.

He moved to Shanghai in 2005 and launched another band, The Red Groove Project. The band's debut album, titled Flow,released in 2014, won three nominations at the established Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan that year: Best Instrumental Album, Best Composition and Best Producer. In 2016, the band released its second album, Proper Up!, which also garnered a Golden Melody nomination for Best Instrumental Album. Ku also travels quite a bit touring with pop stars, such as Hong Kong singer-actress Karen Mok, Chinese American singer-songwriter Shunza, A-Lin, Li Rong Hao, and Yuan Ya Wei.

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic decimated the live performance scene in the first half of the year, and it's only starting to be revived in the last few months. This downtime allowed him to focus his energies on his new educational project, GXS Music (Gong Xian She), which offers music lovers a platform to learn to play guitar online.

Ku spent the pandemic writing materials for the first few seasons of the GXS guitar program, and the first season is currently online, with the second season coming online later this month. He has also been sharing his music learning experience and displaying musical techniques on social media platforms. He is no stranger to music education. In his early years in Beijing, Ku taught at the Beijing Midi Music School and at the Beijing Contemporary Music Academy. In 2006, he co-founded and became the principal of the JZ School in Shanghai, dedicated to contemporary music education.

"China's jazz scene has developed so much now that access to the internet is so widespread as well as access to music programs abroad. Young musicians in China are getting very good very fast and there's more and more fantastic original music coming out of China, Beijing and Shanghai in particular. The sky is the limit," Ku says.