Ensemble's debut release explores the common ground between
two diverse traditions, giving rise to innovative, breathtaking new sounds. Works by Erica Lindsay, Sumi Tonooka, Samantha Boshnack,
David Arend, and Salim Washington, composers brought together by Jazz Composers
Orchestra Institute
"Alchemy Sound Project is speaking with confidence,
creating art that is bold, art that speaks from the soul. Here, in this
collective approach, these musicians share in musical discovery and hear their
own ideas expertly executed. What jumps out and above the powerful, nuanced
performances is the fresh writing." - Music Documentary Producer Steve
Rowland
Medieval alchemists were known to have sought a way to turn
lead into gold, but the actual purpose of their experiments was to transform
the very soul of the alchemist. Alchemy Sound Project follows a similar course,
experimenting with combinations and distillations of jazz, African traditions
and Western classical music in an effort to transform themselves and their
audience. On Further Explorations, the band's debut due out May 27, 2016 on
Artists Recording Collective, five composer-musicians and their invited guests
find a way to meld their distinctive approaches and voices to create a unique
sound with the lushness and intricacy of a symphony orchestra combined with the
spontaneity and interplay of a small jazz group. Alchemy, indeed.
The five core members of Alchemy Sound Project were brought
together by the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, a program initiated by the
American Composers Orchestra and the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia
University to encourage jazz composers to explore writing music for the
symphony orchestra. Directed by composer, trombonist, and educator George Lewis, JCOI
selects 38 jazz composers at various stages of their careers, chosen from a
competitive national pool of applicants, for a one-week summer intensive with
leading composers, conductors and performers.
Tenor saxophonist Erica Lindsay attended the first JCOI
session in 2010; at her encouragement, both pianist Sumi Tonooka (a frequent
collaborator) and trumpet player Samantha Boshnack (a former student of
Lindsay's at Bard College) enrolled in the second round in 2012. There, Tonooka
and Boshnack met and bonded with bassist David Arend and multi-reedist Salim
Washington. By day they studied aspects of music history and the orchestral
palette, while by night they shared inspiration over dinners and walks around
the UCLA campus. A year later, the five reconnected at Tonooka's behest to
further explore the ideas they'd studied in the program.
"It was a very intense experience," Tonooka says
of JCOI. "It got me really excited about being able to apply my own
experiences to the instrument that is the orchestra."
For their debut release, each composer was encouraged to
bring in two new pieces for the group, supplemented for the recording by trombonist
Willem de Koch and drummer Max Wood. The result is an artful and
boundary-stretching amalgam of jazz and classical ideas that shows off the
chemistry formed during the bandmates' brief but enlightening time studying
together. "The JCOI concept is about blurring
these lines, hybridizing jazz elements with classical
music," Arend says. "It's up to us to figure out what that means, but
the synergy of the band is awesome - we're inspiring each other, teaching each
other, pushing each other, and it feels like new territory even though we're
drawing on centuries-old traditions."
The connection between the Alchemy participants is
exemplified by Washington's "Charcoal, Clear, Beautiful All Over,"
which opens the album. The title is taken from the English translation of the
Japanese name "Sumi," while the piece itself was penned to spotlight
the bass clarinet, Tonooka's favorite instrument. Washington, a Professor of
Music at South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal and a collaborator with
jazz visionaries like the late Fred Ho, also contributed the closing track,
"The Call." The tune was written in tribute to Solodeen Muhammad,
whom the composer calls "one of the hipsters of my father's generation.
This piece is in his honor and in appreciation of the psychic and spiritual
support, the cultural continuity that he represents in my life as a musician.
It attempts to channel the hipness and the energy that this streetwise,
musically savvy father figure has passed on to me."
Lindsay, an artist-in-residence and teacher at Bard College
who has performed and recorded with artists ranging from McCoy Tyner and Oliver
Lake to Frank Zappa and Melba Liston, says that her piece "Further
Explorations" is intended to "connote a journey of discovery"
that parallels the creative act. The richly-hued piece, which slowly builds
from a tense alto flute theme over a bass/drum pulse to accumulating horns,
contrasts moments of free improvisation with lush composed sections. The piece,
Lindsay explains, "explores the balance and necessary tension between the
unknown and the known that exist within the creative mind. As one sets out to
leave the known world and fall into unknown territory, there is a certain
wonder and innocence involved as well as the courage to let go of the
known." Lindsay's second piece, the sprightly "Beta," is more
through-composed, though it carries the playful dodge-and-weave energy of the
written lines into its solo sections.
"I was listening to a lot of orchestral works as I was
writing," says Boshnack, "and trying to incorporate and highlight
classical counterpoint and grandeur in my music. I was listening to and
inspired by the music of my colleagues and trying to give them a space in which
to shine." A mainstay of the Seattle jazz scene with her own B'Shnorkestra
and as co-leader of Reptet. Boshnack begins her first piece,
"Alchemical," with a fanfare of classical counterpoint for the horns
and drums before bursting into a heavy groove, prompting intense solos from
Tonooka and Lindsay. "Divergency" sets up a tension between light and
dark, with airy melodies and starker rhythms. Both reflect the hybrid nature of
the ensemble in their apt mash-up titles, combining alchemy and chemistry in
the first, diversity and urgency in the second.
Tonooka, a Philadelphia native now based in Seattle who has
written symphonic and chamber works and film soundtracks in addition to working
with jazz greats from Philly Joe Jones to Rufus Reid, set out to write two
entirely different compositions for the band. The stunning,
crystalline-then-jarring "Waiting" was born from a difficult personal
situation, while the celebratory "Joie de Vivre" combines the
composer's love of Malian music and the contrapuntal approach of composers like
Bach.
The most classically-oriented member of the ensemble, Arend
is a longtime member of the Oakland Symphony as well as a composer and
performer in jazz, electronic, avant-garde, and singer-songwriter contexts. He
adapted "Her Name Is Love" from a piano piece by Czech composer Leo_
Janá_ek, reharmonized with piano removed from the equation entirely. The title
of Arend's second contribution to this recording, "Archetype," refers
to one of the most archetypal formats in jazz, the big band, the sound of which
Arend recreates with the band's seven pieces.
Each of these pieces is striking in its own right, but
together Alchemy Sound Project provides thrilling new avenues for exploration -
which its members are eager and committed to explore. "You could think of
it like a dinner," Tonooka muses. "Everybody brings different dishes
to the table and we're all enjoying and tasting and delving in and creating
something new out of it. That makes it fun for us and interesting to the
listener because it's not just one flavor. It's all of us."
