| Jazz |
Kelsey Mines: A Bass, a Voice, and a Language All Her Own
It is always a rare delight to encounter a young artist whose debut album feels less like an introduction than a fully realized statement. Such is the case with Kelsey Mines, composer, bassist, and vocalist, whose first recording announces her not as a newcomer but as a force. She does not merely play music; she constructs an entire environment. Her compositions are layered worlds where bass lines, melodic arcs, and the human voice intersect in ways that seem at once carefully planned and entirely spontaneous.
What makes her work striking is the tri-dimensional nature of her language. Mines is not just writing pieces for instruments to inhabit; she is layering strata of sound, her bass functioning as anchor and engine, her voice both narrative and instrument, her compositions serving as a connective tissue. The result is music that feels like a secret thread only she knows how to weave, guiding listeners into a universe that is hers alone.
And the impact is immediate. From the first track, the listener understands that Mines is operating on a wide canvas, drawing not only on jazz but also on classical and improvised traditions, and doing so with a daring that belies her years.
A Journey Through Seattle and Beyond
Born and raised in Seattle, Mines came of age within a city that has long balanced its reputation for innovation in popular music with a deep if quieter commitment to jazz. The Pacific Northwest scene, nurtured by institutions like Earshot Jazz and the Ballard Jazz Festival, has served as both incubator and launchpad for generations of musicians. For Mines, it provided fertile soil.
Her academic path underscores a relentless pursuit of depth. She earned a Bachelor of Music in performance at the University of Washington, followed by a Master of Music in double bass performance from Arizona State University. But it was in Europe, studying at the Prince Claus Conservatory in the Netherlands on a prestigious Holland Scholarship, that she discovered a different current of jazz, one that carries more space for experimentation, open form, and a broader palette of arrangements. That European influence is audible in her work: the sensibility of musicians unafraid to stretch beyond American jazz orthodoxy, to treat tradition as springboard rather than template.
When she returned to Seattle, she did so not as a student but as a new voice already in dialogue with her city’s scene. Performances at Earshot Jazz, the Wayward Music Series, and the Ballard Jazz Festival quickly established her as a musician to watch. By 2019, recognition arrived in the form of the Earshot Jazz Golden Ear Award for Emerging Artist. In 2022, she won the inaugural Earshot Jazz Call for Composers, a distinction that further cemented her standing as both
The Music: Cinematic in Scale
Mines’s album is both deeply personal and remarkably expansive. Listening to it is a bit like stepping into widescreen cinema: each piece seems to unfold not only in sound but in image, conjuring landscapes both intimate and vast. Her arrangements occasionally evoke fleeting memories of other artists, Stan Getz’s lyrical freedom, perhaps, or the textural layering of certain European ensembles, but these are only shadows. Ultimately, the music points back to Mines herself, to a voice still forming yet already distinct.
Integral to that sound is flutist Elsa Nilsson, a collaborator whose playing resonates with precision and joy. Nilsson, impressive in her own right, does not merely accompany but amplifies Mines’s vision, adding sovereign echoes that expand the horizon of the compositions. Together, they create a conversation in sound, one that feels less like dialogue than shared storytelling.
A track like Sitting and not Waiting underscores the point. The bass here is not just an instrument; it is protagonist. Mines’s playing is earthy and resonant, imbued with humor, resilience, and authority. Even the album’s title choices reveal something of her character: flashes of wit that suggest an artist aware of the seriousness of her craft but unwilling to take herself too seriously.
Women, the Bass, and the Long View of Jazz
The double bass has traditionally been one of jazz’s most male-dominated instruments—its physicality, its role in rhythm sections, its historical positioning as foundation rather than foreground. For Mines to claim it as both her instrument and her compositional voice is to participate in a slow but steady reshaping of the jazz landscape. Women bassists—from pioneers like Esperanza Spalding to contemporaries across Europe and America—are increasingly shifting perceptions of the instrument, not simply supporting but leading, composing, and redefining ensemble roles.
Mines stands firmly in this lineage while also charting her own path. Her music is not merely about representation; it is about the articulation of an idea: that the bass can sing, anchor, and narrate all at once.
The Larger Conversation
What Mines brings to the Seattle scene, and by extension, to American jazz, is not only technical mastery but a sense of vision. She is an artist deeply rooted in her local community, yet her music bears the imprint of international travel, of classical rigor, of European improvisational traditions, and of her own insistence on humor and humanity.
Her trajectory suggests an artist who has much more to say. The seeds are already visible: in her role as an educator at Cornish, in her continuing presence at festivals, in the community projects she supports. But most of all, they are audible in the music itself, music that speaks of landscapes both geographic and emotional, of questions unresolved, of stories still unfolding.
And that is perhaps the most striking impression left by this debut: the sense that Kelsey Mines is only at the beginning of a journey whose full contours remain to be discovered. What is certain, however, is that she will not take the simplest route. Her path, like her music, insists on depth, risk, and resonance.
In the end, that is why listeners take her seriously. Because she is serious, not in the sense of being solemn, but in the sense of being committed. Her passion for her craft does not just move audiences; it transcends.
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, September 21st 2025
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Musicians :
Elsa Nilsson – flute, bass flute
Beserat Tafesse – trombone
John Hansen – piano
Danilo Silva – acoustic & electric guitars
Kelsey Mines – acoustic & electric bass, voice
Machado Mijiga – drums
Jeff Busch – percussion
Track Listing:
1 Self-Alchemization 6:24
2 Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious 5:01
3 Sitting and Not Waiting 4:32
4 Staying With the Trouble 8:21
5 Até 4:49
6 Pluriverse 6:11
7 Slow Moving 4:14
8 Marcy’s Regret 4:54
All compositions by Kelsey Mines
Produced by Steve Rodby & Kelsey Mines
Recorded December 8, 2024 by Floyd Reitsma at Robert Lang Studio, Shoreline, WA
Assistant engineers: Robert Lang & Chris Rahm
Additional recording by Robb Davidson at Avast!, Seattle, WA
Guitars recorded by Deangelo Silva at Estúdio Gugastro, São Paulo, Brazil
Mixed & mastered by Andrew Munsey, Seattle, WA
Cover photo by Tiffany N. Tomkinson
Cover design & layout by John Bishop