Reflections on Solitude

Released June 2020

this project, reflections on solitude, was, as the title suggests, something that came out of quarantine. when the pandemic happened, it became clear that my plans of performing out at venues and making music with friends and loved ones was going to have to be put on hold. alone in a studio apartment in a new city, i turned to the place that i always went when i felt i had nowhere else to go: the piano. (or technically, yamaha digital piano keyboard because, as i said before, studio apartment.)

these improvisational pieces are not organized by predetermined musical structures or chord progressions but rather begin from a seed—a melodic fragment, harmonic progression, rhythm, a combination of these, or something even more abstract—and then germinate, developing, transforming, and growing in a way that feels organic and free.

there is an internal logic present in each of the pieces, though oftentimes it doesn’t reveal itself immediately. this is true not just for the listener, but also for me. often as i am playing, i myself am trying to uncover and reveal the underlying truths, in real time. what you are hearing, really, is the process of self-exploration, self-reflection, and, eventually, self-discovery—things we are not so quick to do in a world that often takes our external selves at face value. these tracks are what i have distilled from hours and hours of recordings that i have made during quarantine and then organized and constructed into the album’s final form.

i’d advise against reading too much into the track titles. much like our own given names, they exist primarily for identification purposes. a few of them point to some vague imagery or emotional content in the piece; most of them are, to be perfectly frank, completely arbitrary.

while i still have your attention: black lives matter. ACAB. end white supremacy. defund the police and reallocate funds to education, mental health services, affordable housing. boycott amazon and instead support small businesses, especially BIPOC-owned ones. keep protesting, keep fighting, keep working to transform this world into one that we can be proud of. and wear a mask when you’re out in public.

thank you all for listening. much love.

-jc