| Jazz |
“Listening to the conductor/composer Jihye Lee and her astounding orchestra is like watching your entire life flash before your eyes. You see everything: the full richness of the spirit one can attain, all the sadness one can feel, all the dancing mischief one can aspire to.” – Mike Jurkovic, All About Jazz.
Indeed, here is a truly impressive album, co-produced by Darcy James Argue with contributions from Ambrose Akinmusire and percussion by Keita Ogawa of Snarky Puppy. It straddles contemporary music and jazz, with Ambrose Akinmusire just dazzling, drawing the listener into his play, inspiring and inspired. It’s true that he is one of the most remarkable musicians of our time. In recent years, Jihye Lee, one of the most acclaimed jazz composers/conductors for large ensembles of her generation, has been thinking a lot about her grandmother, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 85 after a grueling battle with dementia. Born in 1935 in Korea, then a Japanese colony, she was an orphan and married as a teenager, primarily to protect herself from the sex trade that exploited parentless children like her. Every day, often while her husband drank at the local bar, she would cross a frozen river to collect kindling to heat her home and cook for her family.
Great artists often come from tortured lives, and it seems these forms of suffering, coupled with great intelligence, foster creation through a kind of lucidity and a broad vision of contexts. Lee’s grandmother witnessed extreme political, social, and technological changes in Korea in the following decades, most of these changes being positive, even liberating. But she carried a profound sadness throughout her life. “It wasn’t self-pity,” Lee explains. “It was like a deep sadness in her soul.”
Naturally, Infinite Connections draws from her family history, working under various aspects related to this theme, creating an album as complex as it is admirable, a work that touches us through the emotions it evokes. “I was questioning my identity. Who am I ?” she recalls. “And the most important connection, the one I can never deny, is that I am my mother’s daughter. I come from her body.” Lee realized, of course, that her grandmother could have defined herself the same way, and that the seemingly personal connections in her life could be extrapolated to encompass all humanity. Infinite connections.
A self-exploration, certainly, but one in which each of us can find ourselves, and then there are her insights, her reflections, a being awakening with intelligence as her guide : Since then, she has discovered a confidence in herself that she could never have imagined as a young woman in South Korea. This is the result of seeing strong women thrive on the New York jazz scene, as well as a tribute to her Korean ancestors, who overcame monumental struggles so that Lee could one day achieve her dreams. “At this moment, I can happily say that I have gained a sense of ownership in my work, and I am grateful to my band members who trust me,” she says. “They don’t treat me like a woman; they treat me as a leader, composer, and conductor.”
We could talk for hours about this magnificent and almost insolent album due to the beauty of its musical writing. It’s up to you to discover this album, which for us is one of our “Essentials”; how could it be otherwise?
Thierry De Clemensat
USA correspondent – Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, June 17th 2024
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Tracklist:
- Surrender (feat. Ambrose Akinmusire) (6:22)
- We Are All From The Same Stream (6:38)
- Born In 1935 (7:07)
- Eight Letters (6:59)
- Karma (7:54)
- You Are My Universe (feat. Ambrose Akinmusire) (7:33)
- Nowhere Home (6:59)
- In The Darkest Night (8:32)
- Crossing The River Of Grace (feat. David Smith) (5:11)
THE JIHYE LEE ORCHESTRA:
Ben Kono – alto, piccolo, flute
David Pietro – alto, flute, alto flute
Jason Rigby – tenor, flute, clarinet
Jonathan Lowery – tenor, flute, clarinet
Carl Maraghi -baritone, bass clarinet
Brian Pareschi – trumpet, fluegelhorn
Nathan Eklund– trumpet, fluegelhorn
David Smith – trumpet, fluegelhorn
Stuart Mack – trumpet, fluegelhorn
Mike Fahie – trombone
Alan Ferber – trombone
Nick Grinder – trombone
Jeff Nelson – bass trombone
Alex Goodman – guitar
Adam Birnbaum – piano
Matt Clohesy – bass
Jared Schonig – drums
Keita Ogawa – Percussions