Jordan VanHemert - Survival of the Fittest

GA Russell · Wednesday at 11:17 PM

Jordan VanHemert

Faces Down Difficult Times

On "Survival of the Fittest,"

Set for May 16 Release by

Origin Records

Saxophonist-Composer Draws Inspiration

From Person, Political, & Cultural Adversities

In a Collection of Nine Originals & Standards

In a Sextet with Michael Dease, Lewis Nash, Terell Stafford, Helen Sung, Rodney Whitaker

March 19, 2025

Jordan VanHemert Survival of the Fittest

Tenor saxophonist and composer Jordan VanHemert considers the twin poles of adversity and resilience with Survival of the Fittest, arriving May 16 on Origin Records. VanHemert’s fifth release as a leader, the album of post-bop jazz finds him leading a sextet with a jaw-dropping all-star lineup: trumpeter Terell Stafford, trombonist Michael Dease, pianist Helen Sung, bassist Rodney Whitaker, and drummer Lewis Nash.

While in a broader sense it’s part of a sequence of recordings that explore VanHemert’s identity and struggles as a Korean American, Survival of the Fittest was inspired by the very specific occurrence of his sudden termination due to budget cuts from a tenure-track position as a university director of jazz studies. “The only way I was able to make sense of it was through the music I wrote, which brought me comfort,” he says. “My hope is that in sharing this journey, it would be one that people would identify with because it’s part of the human experience to go through difficult times.”

Yet the music never wallows in anger or self-pity; if anything, it’s an antidote to those crippling feelings. The album opens with the strident determination of “Here and Now” and closes with the celebratory glow of “Survival of the Fittest,” bookending a wide range of ideas, images, and emotions that recast the personal as universal.

There is a balance within this range of darkness and light, intensity and subtlety. The doleful “Mourning Comes Again,” inspired by the racially motivated Atlanta spa shootings of 2021, is offset by the buoyant “Tread Lightly,” a vehicle for Nash to ply his formidable but ever tasteful chops. Similarly, a hard-driving rendition of the standard “Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise” is juxtaposed against the spare, peaceful wonder of “Sea of Tranquility.” Those dueling forces come together in pieces like Ellington’s “Come Sunday”—a song of both oppression and hope—and in the traditional Korean murder ballad “Milyang Arirang,” which VanHemert and company temper with beauty and spirit.

The album’s thesis statement, muses VanHemert, comes from an old Japanese proverb: “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” Whether by accident or design, there are nine tracks to be found on Survival of the Fittest: VanHemert takes one extra stand just to remind us, the listeners, of the hidden strength we all have within us.

Jordan VanHemert was born in 1988 in Cheongju, South Korea, but was adopted as an infant by American parents who raised him in Holland, Michigan. The family loved music and Jordan had taken up alto saxophone by the time he was 11 years old. When his school band proved a less-than-ideal training ground for his instrument of choice, VanHemert talked his way into the jazz band despite his being a beginner. He learned the repertoire first through a Charlie Parker album he’d received from his grandfather, then by checking out stacks of CDs from the local library.

The jazz-education-by-fire stuck. VanHemert (who by then had switched to tenor sax) earned a degree in music education from Central Michigan University, then went on to graduate studies in music at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It was while he was at UM that VanHemert also began investigating his Korean heritage, which became an essential component of both his personal and artistic identities.

Capping off his education with a doctorate in jazz performance from the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, VanHemert made the transition from student to teacher. He was also a working musician and composer, incorporating Korean traditional music into his jazz rubric. This, plus the emotions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent scapegoating of Asians and Asian Americans for the spread of the virus, led to the creation of his first album, I Am Not a Virus, released in 2021.

VanHemert dug deep into his musical and cultural heritage as a Korean American with his second album, Nomad (2022), and the following year’s Metamorphosis EP. He then plumbed the depths of the modern jazz tradition with 2024’s Deep in the Soil, an album that introduced the same all-star sextet that populates Survival of the Fittest. He is currently director of jazz studies at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.