| Jazz |
Summary: A richly textured jazz album blending global influences and personal history, Brian Citro’s Keep Moving (Home) explores the meaning of “home” with warmth, intelligence, and understated virtuosity.
Brian Citro’s Keep Moving (Home): A Jazz Journey Through Identity, Memory, and Belonging
Calligram Records has built a reputation as a label in steady pursuit of thoughtful, high-quality work, and Brian Citro’s latest album is no exception. As is often the case when encountering an unfamiliar artist, the ritual begins simply: the disc slides into the player, and the listening unfolds without preconception. What follows, almost immediately, is a sense of ease, a quiet recognition of an artist whose musical language feels both grounded and inviting.
Citro, a guitarist and composer, draws from the deep wells of jazz, soul, and pop, distilling from each tradition its most compelling elements. There is, at times, a subtle echo of the 1980s, fleeting but evocative, recalling the polished, groove-forward sensibilities of ensembles like MFSB. Yet this is no exercise in nostalgia. Rather, it is a reminder that musical memory, when handled with care, can enrich rather than overshadow the present.
From the opening track, Citro’s playing stands out for its restraint and intelligence. His guitar work is neither showy nor overbearing; instead, it unfolds with a deliberate subtlety that rewards attentive listening. On early standout moments, such as the album’s opening piece, his phrasing leans into space and tone, allowing each note to resonate fully. Another track, built around a gently syncopated groove, highlights the quartet’s cohesion, bass and drums locking into a supple rhythmic foundation while Citro sketches melodic lines that feel both conversational and precise. A more reflective composition midway through the record reveals his sensitivity to harmony, with chord voicings that subtly shift emotional color without drawing overt attention.
It is one of jazz’s enduring strengths that each musician brings fragments of their personal history into their compositions, and here, that principle is vividly at work. These fragments, experiences, influences, and reflections, are what lend an album its emotional coherence and, ultimately, its meaning.
Keep Moving (Home), Citro’s most ambitious project to date, is a collection of fourteen compositions that bridge his life as a jazz musician with his parallel career as a human rights lawyer. The album also marks his return to the Chicago jazz scene after years spent abroad. During that time, Citro immersed himself in a range of musical traditions: performing Sufi music with Rajasthani musicians in New Delhi, exploring highlife alongside Ghanaian artists in Accra, and developing his own work with a trio of Indian jazz musicians.
“Keep Moving (Home) grew out of my experiences as both a musician and a human rights lawyer,” Citro has said. “The more I traveled, the more I questioned what ‘home’ really means.”
That question, both philosophical and deeply personal, runs quietly but persistently throughout the album. Even before one becomes aware of Citro’s biography, there is something undeniably human in the music: a warmth, a sense of intimacy, a feeling of being invited into a space that is both reflective and generous. The concept of “home” is approached with notable intelligence, never reduced to cliché, and instead explored as something fluid, complex, and emotionally resonant.
Many of the album’s fourteen pieces began as solo guitar compositions before being arranged for a quartet featuring guitar, bass, drums, and keys. In this process, collaborator Kirchner—serving as a key arranger and musical partner, emerges as an essential figure, helping shape the album’s shifting textures, moods, and rhythmic contours. The interplay between musicians is consistently understated yet effective, with each player contributing to a collective sound rather than competing for attention.
The range of influences is striking: from jazz innovators such as Thelonious Monk, Pat Metheny, Jeff Parker, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, to the melodic sensibilities of Stevie Wonder, Todd Rundgren, Cass McCombs, and Neil Young. These influences, combined with Citro’s international musical encounters, create a sonic palette that is both diverse and cohesive.
Such references reveal not only Citro’s artistic lineage but also the broader contours of a life deeply engaged with culture and expression. The result is music that is richly layered yet accessible, a balance that is far from easy to achieve. Indeed, the dual demands of musicianship and legal scholarship seem to converge here, producing a work that is intellectually grounded without ever feeling distant.
Recorded to tape at Chicago’s Palisade Studio using vintage microphones and preamps, a spacious live room for acoustic instruments, and the studio’s in-house plate reverb, Keep Moving (Home) captures not just the sound but the atmosphere of a particular moment in Citro’s artistic journey. There is a tangible sense of presence, a warmth in the recording that mirrors the emotional tone of the music itself.
If there is a minor reservation, it lies in the album’s pacing. At fourteen tracks, the project occasionally risks feeling slightly extended, with certain mid-album passages blending into one another. Yet even this is less a flaw than a reflection of the album’s immersive quality, its desire to be lived in rather than merely sampled.
This, perhaps, is what art aspires to be: a convergence of composition, performance, sound, and visual presentation into a unified whole. Even the album’s cover contributes to this sense of cohesion. The result is a work that feels carefully crafted yet never self-important, an album that offers genuine pleasure to the listener, and one imagines, reflects the same sense of fulfillment experienced by the musicians who brought it to life.
Recommended for listeners who appreciate thoughtful, melodic jazz with global influences, fans of modern guitar-led ensembles, as well as those drawn to artists who blur the lines between genres while remaining deeply rooted in musical storytelling.
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, April 21st 2026
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Musicians :
BRIAN CITRO guitar
NICK MAZZARELLA alto saxophone and Wurlitzer
MATT ULERY electric and double bass
QUIN KIRCHNER drums and percussion
Track Listing :
1. Stay Where You Feel
2. The Take Down
3. For You 470
4. Keep Moving (Home)
5. Find Some Strength
6. Risks & Opportunities
7. Rolling Down, Back Up
8. Prelude …
9. … to Restraint
10. From Hudson
11. Consternation
12. Bloom in Gloom
13. Trains of Thought
14. Take Your Time
All compositions by Brian Citro
Produced by Nick Mazzarella and Brian Citro
Recorded to tape by Dave Vettraino at Palisade Studio, Chicago, November 2024 and April 2025
Mixed and mastered by Dave Vettraino at International Anthem Studio, Chicago Photographs by Samuel Lynn Davis III
Layout and design by Chad McCullough