Get all 13 Tania Caroline Chen releases available on Bandcamp and save 15%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Piano Music - Cornelius Cardew and Michael Parsons, Superparticular, Iridescence, SOCRATE by Erik Satie arranged for two pianos by John Cage, Schoenberg Five Pieces for Orchestra op.16 for two pianos arr. Webern, Monitored Feldman, Daily Necessities album: Tania Caroline Chen & Steve Beresford, Dream Dialogue album - Tania Caroline Chen, solo electronic music, and 5 more.
Excludes supporter-only releases.
1. |
Pine
06:17
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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2. |
Aspen
04:51
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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3. |
Cedar
05:28
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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4. |
Willow
03:36
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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5. |
Lilac
06:41
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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6. |
Hawthorn
03:49
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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7. |
Hickory
07:53
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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8. |
Cottonwood
08:49
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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9. |
Linden
04:38
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Sleeve notes for Every Leaf...
A bright spot in the universe and beneath the ground a little funky bouquet.
Now is a time to search for these. They are elusive. Truffles. We nose around in the dirt, but all we come up with so often is mud. Where are the beloved fungi? Cage’s prized edibles. What shall we shave on our risotto? Where is that musk we long for? And if we found some truffles, would we be able to eat them on a sunlit day, outdoors, with a glass of Riesling. Nothing fancy, no stem on the glass, a plain plate with nothing but the rice dish.
I’m going on about this imaginary or remembered culinary experience because it’s a parallel to the feeling I have listening to Every Leaf. We’ve come to understand that radiance is one of Wadada Leo Smith’s gifts, a singular way of intoning the trumpet that he’s honed over sixty-plus years of playing – something in the special burr of his sound, something in the choices of material he makes. Perhaps even more astonishing is the way he’s able to modulate radiance, not just to spit sun rays from the bell of his horn but to shape them, shade them, hue them, and otherwise conjugate them. Wadada’s music has been more widely disseminated in the last decade, and the world is brighter for it, but if you return to his early work, the records he made on his own Kabell label, you hear a familiar timbre: joy. And then, along with this yellow-orange sound, there’s the funk. The earthiness. Getting down into the ground and pulling up a bulb of lovely.
The peripatetic pianist and multi-instrumentalist Tania Caroline Chen is a fascinating companion for Smith. She’s steeped in the experimental musical tradition of Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Cardew, but she’s bridged the aleatory and the improvised, working with the great pianist, Cardew scholar, and AMM member John Tilbury, and the omnivorous pianist Steve Beresford, among many others from either side of the free/not-free divide. And of course music as rich as hers shows how threadbare the term “free” really is – she brings her own sort of radiance, a harmonic sensibility that’s startlingly open and un-presumptuous, sometimes richly romantic. Listen to the sensitive way she moves between the keyboard and the interior of the piano – struts and hammers – at the outset of “Lilac.” Nothing is rushed or stressed. The only tension is inherent in the sounds, a necessary urgency. Maybe better to say it’s not forced. Things unfold, take shape, are given more form, lead from one idea to another, crossing other ideas along the way. But the music is neither led nor followed. Something between.
Every Leaf was recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, in 2017. The legendary studio, which had hosted folks from Sonny Rollins to Credence Clearwater Revival, closed a year later, after 47-years in business. Chen and Smith have released one other record together, Ocean Of Storms, a quartet session recorded the same year with guitarist Henry Kaiser and percussionist William Winant. On this outing, the music was recorded on a single day. Nine tracks, all single takes.
Snuffling for truffles, this would be an exceptional haul. The sun’s setting now. In my mind’s eye, I’m pulling out the mandoline, extracting a knob of black gold, slicing a bit onto the steaming pile of risotto, unlocking an intoxicating aroma. A taste, a sip. I turn up the portable stereo, Tania and Wadada, introducing another kind of intoxication – a perfectly radiant duo.
– John Corbett, Chicago, December 2020
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Tania Caroline Chen recommends:
Organic Resonance
by Wadada Leo Smith & Anthony Braxton
Syncretic clusters merge with soaring lightning. Always mesmerising. (Loved working with him)
go to album
Compulsive, absorbing, endorphin machine
go to album
Onomatopoeia
go to albumIf you like Tania Caroline Chen, you may also like:
Sun Beans of Shimmering Light
by Wadada Leo Smith / Douglas R. Ewart / Mike Reed
supported by 28 fans who also own “Every Leaf: Tania Caroline Chen & Wadada Leo Smith”
Simply amazing to hear a new album with Wadada and Ewart!! ...And Reed rounds out this trio beautifully. Just gave it my first spin. Absolutely magical.
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Pacifica Koral Reef
by Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Kaiser, Alex Varty
supported by 22 fans who also own “Every Leaf: Tania Caroline Chen & Wadada Leo Smith”
This record at times is the sum of its parts and the strength of its parts. At times, you can plainly tell the player from 100 yards away with your eyes closed, but then you can hear them echoing the ghosts of those who came before them. An incredibly brilliant record from 3 master blasters!
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Icelandic saxophonist and composer Tumi Árnason delivers five hushed, minimalist songs, melodies arriving in pointillist bursts.
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