| Jazz |
Between Breath and Architecture: Chenxi Pan’s Daring Debut Endless Summer
On her debut album Endless Summer, out in late March on Origin Records, singer and composer Chenxi Pan resists the temptation that so often shadows first releases: the urge to declare, to impress, to overwhelm. Instead, she constructs a patient interior world, one that unfolds gradually, almost ceremonially, as if trust must be earned before revelation.
The Seattle-based jazz label has built its reputation on discerning curation, frequently identifying artists who stretch the vocabulary of contemporary jazz without abandoning its lineage. With Pan, that instinct feels especially prescient. Endless Summer does not situate itself comfortably within the mainstream of vocal jazz. Nor does it court crossover appeal in obvious ways. It occupies a quieter, more deliberate terrain, chamber-like in its intimacy, contemporary in its harmonic language, and subtly transnational in spirit.
“I’m interested in the voice as part of the ensemble, not above it,” Pan said in a recent conversation. “Sometimes the voice should feel like breath inside the harmony.” That philosophy animates the album from its opening moments.
A Voice Within the Architecture
Across the record, Pan’s compositions hover between contemporary classical textures and modern jazz phrasing. The effect is less song cycle than sonic landscape. Rather than foregrounding virtuosic runs or overt rhythmic drive, she shapes her vocal lines with restraint, often allowing them to dissolve into the instrumental fabric.
On the title track, Endless Summer, a sparse piano motif unfolds in open intervals before brushed percussion and a muted guitar enter almost imperceptibly. Pan’s voice emerges not with declarative clarity but as if surfacing from within the harmony itself, sustained tones bending gently against shifting chords. Midway through, a subtle harmonic modulation tilts the emotional center of the piece, and what began as pastoral becomes quietly unsettled. The arrangement never erupts; instead, it deepens. The tension resides in suspension.
The album’s sequencing reveals unusual compositional discipline. It does not seek to persuade immediately. The early tracks establish atmosphere, poetic, spacious, contemplative. Only later do the emotional crests rise. By the time the listener reaches the closing piece, a distilled, almost translucent reinterpretation of the sixth track, the structural symmetry becomes apparent. The record feels less like a collection of discrete songs and more like a single evolving statement.
Beyond Straight-Ahead Tradition
Listeners devoted strictly to traditional, straight-ahead jazz may find the album’s pacing unconventional. There are no standards, no showpiece scatting passages, no obvious swing-era callbacks. Yet to measure Pan’s work by those expectations would be to miss its intent.
In her early ability to gather an audience beyond conventional jazz venues, she recalls the emergence of Youn Sun Nah, not stylistically, but in the sense of forging a parallel space within the genre. Like Nah, Pan cultivates an audience receptive to atmosphere and emotional nuance over technical display.
Her work also aligns with a broader movement in contemporary jazz: the growing convergence of chamber music aesthetics, cross-cultural influence, and ensemble writing that blurs the boundary between composition and improvisation. In recent years, many younger artists have embraced hybrid forms, incorporating classical structures, folk inflections, and experimental textures into jazz frameworks. Endless Summer participates in this evolution, yet its sensibility feels deeply personal rather than trend-driven.
A Transnational Foundation
Born and raised in China, Pan grew up immersed in diverse musical traditions before turning toward jazz more fully during her early academic years. Literature preceded music in her studies, a detail that resonates in the narrative pacing of her compositions. Rather than building toward obvious climaxes, her pieces unfold like short stories, attentive to atmosphere and subtext.
Her move to New York in 2021 marked a decisive chapter. At The New School, where she completed a degree in jazz and contemporary music, she studied with mentors including Sam Yahel and Sara Serpa. She also performed alongside musicians such as Steve Cardenas, Dave Glasser, Cyrus Chestnut, Armen Donelian and Fred Hersch, experiences that helped refine her ensemble sensibility.
The synthesis of these influences, Asian tonal sensitivity, American jazz lineage, classical compositional awareness’ is palpable. There are fleeting folk-like intonations in her phrasing, moments of near-meditative stillness, and an almost Zen-like patience in her timing. Yet the music never drifts into abstraction. Beneath its serenity lies structural rigor.
An Identity Already Formed
For a debut, Endless Summer feels remarkably assured. Its confidence does not derive from volume or bravura, but from clarity of vision. Pan understands the emotional arc she wishes to trace, and trusts the listener to follow.
The closing track, lighter and more skeletal than its earlier counterpart, functions almost as a postscript — a subtle indication that this material is not fixed, that themes may reappear in altered form. It hints at a trajectory defined not by reinvention but by refinement. If this album establishes her artistic coordinates, the next may well expand them.
What Chenxi Pan offers here is not immediate gratification but sustained resonance. It is music that rewards patience, that invites close listening rather than background consumption. In an era of accelerated attention, that alone feels quietly radical.
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, February 25th 2026
Follow PARIS-MOVE on X
::::::::::::::::::::::::
Musicians :
Chenxi Pan – voice
Nathan Nakadegawa-Lee – tenor saxophone, clarinet
Shaonan ‘Trigger’ Su – piano
George Grydkovets – guitar
Nicolas Bond – bass
Anders Julsgaard – drums
Peyton Cook – violin
Julie Kim – cello
Track Listing:
1 Hymn for the Spring 8:33
2 At Dusk 7:04
3 Little Bells 4:42
4 Clarity 2:45
5 New Year’s Wish 2:55
6 Endless Summer 5:24
7 Rain of May (Intro) 0:48
8 Rain of May 6:23
9 Awakening 5:51
10 If Only for a Moment 4:10
11 Parachute 3:09
12 Fate (Wherever It Leads Me) 6:29
13 Endless Summer (Reprise) 1:41
All music by Chenxi Pan (Chenxi Pan Music, BMI)
Production Info:
Produced by Matt Wilson
Recorded by Chris Sulit at Trading 8s Recording Studio, Paramus, NJ, on May 20-21, 2025
Mixed & mastered by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Recording, New York, NY
Cover photos by Zhaoyin Wang
Band photos by Chunhan Chen
Cover design & layout by John Bishop