Figments

Digital Liner Notes for My New Record

I have a new record out! Figments is my debut album as a leader featuring seven of my original contemporary jazz compositions exploring themes of growth and coming of age. It is out now on all streaming services, but since most don’t have any liner notes component like the good old days of vinyl records, I thought I would take the opportunity to use this platform to share some of the backstory with you all. Figments is also available as CDs (which you can purchase here), but those only have so much space for text. I had to be conservative with what I wrote there, but here, I’ll get into more detail.

For this project, I assembled a fantastic Chicago-based band with five other musicians, all of whom I met during my studies at DePaul University: Jayden Richardson on drums, Marion Mallard on bass, Aval Stanley on piano, Garrett Munz on alto and tenor saxophone, and Julia Danielle on vocals. These musicians did an incredible job of bringing my compositions to life.

We recorded last May at Rax Trax Recording in Chicago. Andy Shoemaker did a fantastic job recording, mixing, and mastering the record. Kyler Wurf filmed the session and took the album cover photos and Emily Groenenboom designed the album cover. Shifting Paradigm Records released the album. The album was funded in part by the Chicago Music Scene Fellowship. I am very grateful to all of these people for helping me bring this project to fruition!

Let’s start with the title. A figment is something believed to be real that exists only in the imagination. For me, figments are the impetus of creative output; every composition begins as a figment to be developed and molded into a tangible work. Thus, I thought it would be a great title for this album—the first full album of my compositions that I’ve taken all the way from fragments and sparks of ideas to fully-fleshed, recorded pieces.

The album begins with introductory track “Butterfly Watching.” The title is a play on bird watching, imagining a similar activity but with butterflies instead of birds. I wrote this piece a few years ago after learning the Spanish word “duende.” Duende does not have a direct translation to English, but it refers to a feeling of awe and inspiration, especially in nature—the overwhelming sense of beauty and magic. I wrote “Butterfly Watching” to convey the wonder and awe natural beauty can invoke. Let me paint a picture for you: you are hiking in a forest and suddenly come upon a small clearing full of hundreds of migrating butterflies. “Butterfly Watching” is a soundtrack to that image, with a composed piano part mimicking the fluttering and flapping of butterfly wings. The through-composed material is bookended by sounds of nature and birdcalls that I recorded at Montrose Bird Sanctuary in Chicago. Bringing it back to the album theme of coming-of-age, I think this kind of awe and wonder is a feeling abundant in childhood that fades as we age. “Butterfly Watching” calls listeners to cast off the societally constructed burdens of adulthood and let themselves experience childlike joy again.

Track number two and the second of two singles released leading up to the full album is “Dandelion.” I dedicated this piece to my mother, who lets dandelions grow up all over her yard. Where others see a malignant weed, she sees a beautiful flower. In that spirit, the song is about seeing the good in everyone and having compassion and empathy even for those who we disagree with, something I have always admired my mother for being able to do. The uplifting melody projects a message of hope, encouraging optimism even in the face of darkness and doubt, celebrating the resilience of dandelions. “Dandelion” fits into the album theme of growth both literally and figuratively.

The third track, “Rapid Eye Movement” features a more resolute melody atop an uptempo rhythm section playing in conflicting yet interlocking time feels. It reflects the stress of fast-paced adulthood that greets us as we exit our youth, the push and pull of feeling the need to catch our breath and the need to catch up with the expectations and pressures placed upon us.

The next track, “Cherry Blossoms In The Rain // Sailing Through A Cloud” is a two-part composition and was the first single released from the album. It is the first jazz composition that I have written lyrics for, which Julia Danielle does an incredible job bringing to life on the record. While the other tracks deliver meaning in more abstract forms due to their instrumental nature, “Cherry Blossoms In The Rain // Sailing Through A Cloud” continues the juxtaposition of age and youth more explicitly through its lyrics. The first half is told from the perspective of someone at the end of their life as they begin to develop dementia, lose their memory, and struggle to cling to the memory of a loved one.

Time keeps passing by like the grey clouds on a pale blue sky.

Love where have you gone?

You were here.

Now you’re lost.

Don’t forget cherry blossoms in the

Rain falls onto blush and the vibrant hues return so lush.

How could I lose something so sweet?

slipping from my mind and falling into grey

Cherry my dear, come back to me before I leave.

I’m out of time.

After a brief piano interlude, the second half transports the listener back to the narrator’s childhood, where they are living the euphoric and joyous memory that eludes them in the first half.

Flying in the sky among the stars and the moon

I’m here with you

just you and me

sailing through a cloud

soaring so high but soon we will drift back down, until then

flying through the sky above the hills and the trees

I’m by your side

floating so light

drifting on a breeze

we’ll sail so high up in these celestial seas until then

flying through the stars at night

the moon will be our guiding light

until the sun awakes and brings us back to solid ground

Kyler Wurf also made a great lyric video for “Cherry Blossoms In The Rain // Sailing Through A Cloud.”

With a change-of-pace tambourine intro, the fifth track, “Echo,” features a dynamic 7/8 groove. Similar repeating melodic phrases float over shifting harmony, reflecting how changing context influences our perspective.

The penultimate track, “The Alchemist,” begins with an extended bass cadenza improvised by Marion Mallard before launching into the ostinato bassline that defines the piece along with its haunting melody. Alchemy is described as a fantastical process of transformation, creation, and combination, which is conveyed through collective improvisation in the piece. “The Alchemist” and “Butterfly Watching” are the two oldest compositions on the album, both from around my senior year of high school, though they’ve gone through some edits since then.

I always love the bold choice of ending a live set with a ballad and the final song on Figments, “Ballad for the Bittersweet,” is, you guessed it, a ballad. In fact, it is the only ballad I have composed to date. Written during my senior year at DePaul to commemorate the end of my undergraduate experience, “Ballad for the Bittersweet” explores the feeling of simultaneous joy at a happy experience tinged with sadness at the impending end of that moment, fitting as the album comes to a close.

As I mentioned above, you can find Figments on any streaming service, and if you are a CD person, you can purchase those here.