| Jazz |
Amina Claudine Myers’ “Solace of the Mind” Offers a Sublime Meditation on Art, Silence, and the Soul.
There are albums that pass through the ear. And there are albums, rare, elegant, unflinchingly sincere, that pass through the soul. Solace of the Mind, the new solo release by pianist, composer, and vocalist Amina Claudine Myers, belongs squarely to the latter. In a time often preoccupied with volume and velocity, Myers offers a masterclass in restraint, space, and purpose. The silences she crafts between her notes, like those of Erik Satie or Henry Purcell, are as vital as the notes themselves. This is music where silence doesn’t mean absence; it means intention. It forms a dramaturgy not of excess, but of essence.
Few artists today could produce a work of such intimate power and command. To do so requires more than technical prowess, it demands a life steeped in musical tradition, tempered by self-reflection, and shaped by a temperament capable of radical openness. Myers, with six decades of musical experience behind her, has more than earned that authority. Solace of the Mind follows her critically acclaimed collaboration with trumpet visionary Wadada Leo Smith, Mosaic: Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens of Central Park, released by Red Hook Records in May. That project, as I wrote at the time, was an act of communion. This album is something more inward: a meditation.
Produced by Sun Chung, founder of Red Hook Records and a former ECM producer, Solace of the Mind feels like a spiritual cousin to the golden era of ECM, refined, aware, luminous. Myers moves effortlessly between piano, Hammond B3 organ, and voice, constructing not just compositions, but landscapes. Her sound draws from the deep well of her Baptist and Methodist church roots, from the fervor of gospel, from the narrative drive of rhythm and blues. But this is no nostalgic pastiche. Rather, it’s a document of evolution, of an artist in full bloom, reckoning with her history while writing new, modern scripture.
In her playing, one hears echoes not only of Jarrett’s vulnerability and spiritual intensity, but also something wholly her own—a kind of lucid honesty that defies genre. This is music that asks questions: about our place in the world, about the art we choose to consume and create, about the quiet spaces we so often avoid. It invites us not merely to listen, but to reflect, to feel, to be.
Over the years, Myers has shared stages and studios with giants, Archie Shepp, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Charlie Haden, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton. Each collaboration added to her tapestry. Yet in this solo offering, stripped of any external voice but her own, Myers stands taller than ever. Her recent honors, the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master designation in 2024, and the Mellon Jazz Legacies Fellowship in 2025, are acknowledgments of her impact. But Myers remains characteristically humble. “Jazz Master? I guess that means I need to step up my game,” she muses with a smile. “It has to be something masterful.”
And Solace of the Mind is exactly that: masterful. Not in the bombastic sense of technical dominance, but in the quiet conviction of an artist who knows herself. It is a collection of poetic clarity, contemplative, vulnerable, and transcendent. To listen is to be changed, if only subtly. One does not walk away unscathed from such intimacy.
In the end, can we even call this jazz? Perhaps not. Perhaps to do so is to limit what Myers has offered. For hers is not a genre but a gesture, toward art in its highest, most human form.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, June 13th 2025
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Musicians :
Amina Claudine Myers, piano
Tracklist :
African Blues
Song For Mother E
Sensuous
Steal Away
Ode To My Ancestors
Voices
Hymn For John Lee Hooker
Twilight
Cairo
Beneath The Sun
Recorded: October 27 & 28, 2023 – Sear Sound, New York, February 9, 2024 – Home organ recording, New York
Engineer: Chris Allen, Rick Kwan – Mixing: Rick Kwan – Mastering: Alex Bonney
All photos: Crystal Blake – Cover Art: Sam Winston – Design: Matt Appleton
Produced by Sun Chung