Be Water (Mack Avenue)

Christian Sands

Released July, 2020

JAZZ FM 25 Best Jazz Albums of 2020

Jazziz Best Albums of 2020

AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2020

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About:

It can be overwhelming to realize how much water surrounds us, affects us and impacts our lives. It’s an element vital to survival yet can be utterly devastating; it can be placid and beautiful or torrential and violent. It’s ubiquitous – flowing at the turn of a faucet, comprising 70% of our own bodies – yet somehow intangible, able to change form or assume the shape of its surroundings.

On his stunning new album, Be Water, pianist Christian Sands takes inspiration from water’s tranquility and power and muses on the possibilities offered by echoing its fluidity and malleability. Through ten gorgeous and thrilling pieces, Sands alternately conjures the serenity of a sun-dappled lake and the drama of a relentless thunderstorm. Just embarking on his 30s, Sands has already enjoyed a remarkable career trajectory, touring and recording with Christian McBride’s Inside Straight and Trio, as well as collaborating with the likes of Gregory Porter and Ulysses Owens.

The vividly expressionistic recording finds Sands with his core trio of longtime bassist Yasushi Nakamura and drummer Clarence Penn, with brilliant contributions from guitarist Marvin Sewell, saxophonist Marcus Strickland,trumpeter Sean Jones and trombonist Steve Davis. On one piece the ensemble is also supplemented by a string quartet featuring Sara Caswell, Tomoko Akaboshi, Benni von Gutzeit and Eleanor Norton.

Be Water is Sands’ fourth release (including a five-track digital-only EP as an extension of his debut album Reach) for Mack Avenue Music Group. The album takes its title from the philosophy of martial arts master and movie star Bruce Lee (by way of screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, who distilled his thoughts for the screen). Lee’s voice appears on both halves of Sands’ title track offering this profound advice: “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle… Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” (Bruce Lee inspirational quote)

Lee was an early idol for Sands, who grew up watching his classic films with his father and skillfully studied a variety of martial arts himself – until the notion of breaking boards and cinder blocks with his hands seemed ill-advised for a promising young pianist. Lee’s teachings re-entered Sands’ thoughts during his two-year residency with Jazz at Lincoln Center in Shanghai, China, which opened up new worlds of culture and philosophy to him. Those pursuits led him to the writings of Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan on the mysticism of sound and music.

“I was trying to practice being more open, more free, more flexible than I usually am,” Sands explains. “Through that I started to have this awareness of just how much water was all around me. As I was touring it seemed to be raining every day; I actually had to change a few dates because of a hurricane. I even started seeing a new doctor who told me I needed to drink more water [laughs]. It seemed to be some kind of a divine message to pay attention to water.”

In case the pianist wasn’t receiving that message, it was delivered in an even more direct and moving form one day following a performance in Hawaii. “I was driving back to the airport and had a little bit of time to kill,” Sands recalls. “We decided to stop along the way at this very beautiful park. We were sitting by the water and a huge sea turtle swam slowly up to me. He came very close and peeked his head out as if to say, ‘This is the essence of what you need to be writing about.’”

Point taken, Sands began composing his most wide-ranging and ambitious set of compositions to date. The introductory track takes form gradually, with the glacial pace and implacable momentum of a rising tide. The simple sounds of lapping waves flow into a dawning melody on arco bass, slowly but forcefully surging to a gripping crescendo as more instrumentalists join in. The piece was modeled on the impactful openings of another of Sands’ major influences, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

The rollicking “Sonar” takes the concept of navigating via sound as a metaphor for the way in which we relate to our surroundings, echoing off of and situating ourselves within a larger picture. Lee’s words usher in the chorale-like “Be Water I,” with its interwoven horn lines over Penn’s shifting tempos. Its companion piece, “Be Water II,” is an elegant dance between the trio and the string quartet, arranged by Sands’ Manhattan School of Music classmate Miho Hazama.

Propelled by Penn’s driving rhythm, “Crash” depicts the impact of waves on the shore, or the collisions among people. The scintillating “Drive” peers within, imagining personal ambition with the unstoppable force of the ocean and summoning ferocious solos from Strickland and Sewell. The amorphous “Steam” finds water taking its most elusive form, evaporating into thin air before one’s very eyes; the piece offers the trio at its most abstract yet always maintaining a perfect tension between its three diverging and reconvening poles.

The cyclical nature of water, its ability to flow staggering distances or gather in the clouds only to fall back to earth, sparked the choice of the album’s sole non-original, a gospel-tinged take on Steve Winwood’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” (originally recorded by the supergroup Blind Faith). The wistful pairing of Sewell’s luxuriant guitar and Sands’ evanescent touch evoke the calmness of a wave-free lake on “Still.” The fanfare-like “Outro” playfully reverses the “Intro,” ending the album on a cinematically celebratory note. The music of Be Water flows with the mesmerizing tranquility and awesome power of its namesake. On his most conceptually ambitious album to date, Christian Sands takes heed of Bruce Lee’s wisdom and truly allows his creativity to transform and assume a dazzling variety of forms.

Track Listing:

1. Intro (Christian Sands) 03:38

2. Sonar (Christian Sands) 07:12

3. Be Water, Pt. 1 (Christian Sands) 05:57

4. Crash (Christian Sands) 06:03

5. Drive (Christian Sands / Marcus Strickland) featuring Marcus Strickland 08:16

6. Steam (Christian Sands) 07:42

7. Can’t Find My Way Home (Steve Winwood) 07:13

8. Be Water, Pt. 2 (Christian Sands) 05:59

(Grammy Nominee for Best Instrumental Composition 2021)

9. Still (Christian Sands) feat. Marvin Sewell 09:02

10. Outro (Christian Sands) 03:23

Personnel:

Christian Sands: piano (all tracks); keyboards (1); voice (1); Fender Rhodes (1, 2, 3, 10); Hammond B2 (5)

Yasushi Nakamura: bass

Clarence Penn: drums

Marvin Sewell: guitars (1, 5, 9, 10)

Marcus Strickland: tenor saxophone, bass clarinet (3, 5, 10)

Sean Jones: trumpet, flugelhorn (3, 10)

Steve Davis: trombone (3, 10)

String Quartet (8)

Sara Caswell: 1st violin

Tomoko Akaboshi: 2nd violin

Benni von Gutzeit: viola

Eleanor Norton: cello

Recorded September 16, 2019, at Samurai Hotel Recording Studio, Astoria, NY

Producer: Christian Sands

Engineer and Mixing: Todd Whitelock

Mastering Engineer: Mark Wilder

Assistant Engineer: David Stoller, Teng Chen

Photography: Anna Webber

Design: Raj Naik

Executive Producer: Gretchen Valade

Review:

A small opus which rises from within, “Intro,” unassuming title and all, begins Be Water, a true wealth of music which pianist Christian Sands has designed to flow not only like the awe-inspiring, fear-inducing title element, but like mercy, freely and without boundary.
And so it does. For next is “Sonar,” a romping festival of feisty performances from Sands and his core trio of bassist Yasushi Nakamura and drummer Clarence Penn which is meant to assure each other and listeners alike that they’re setting out for points as much known as unknown on all cylinders. They’re cutting no corners. They’ll call upon the masters one moment, (Art Blakey effortlessly and thankfully comes to mind) or they’ll push their collective sense of new bop to the margins.
For a little perspective, Facing Dragons (Mack Avenue Records, 2018) was hailed uniformly, by friend and foe alike, to be a wide-ranging master class. Be Water, Sands’ fourth release for Mack Avenue Records, goes beyond that, positing new horizons with new promises and new voices brought to the fore. That said, the next voice you hear is Bruce Lee, (yes that Bruce Lee) Buddha-like urging “Be formless, shapeless like water” and thus “Be Water I” takes the shape of expectation driven by Penn’s boundless sense of time, Sands’ ever more expressive Rhodes, and the entwined front line featuring tenor saxophonist Sean Jones and trombonist Steve Davis.
“Drive” at first takes the shape of edgy 70’s jazz/rock as guitarist Marvin Sewell tickles, Sands probes, and Penn holds the tension, before Strickland unapologetically elbows in, only to have all combine for one of those rousing anthems powered to completion by Sewell’s stinging, surging solo. Speaking of rock, Steve Winwood‘s haunting, 1969 Blind Faith classic “Can’t Find My Way” goes full gospel with Nakamura at the helm, as Sands unleashes his exuberance for Winwood’s mournful melody and Penn crashes away. “Steam” finds the trio at their abstract best. And yes, though for some it might cut a little too close to what was once called new age, Sands’ innate and intimate sense of melodic spaciousness holds both him and Sewell in its elegant grasp on the shimmering impressionism of “Still.”
Though he really made his debut as leader at thirteen on Footprints (Stanza, 2002), Sands’ growth has been exponential, and on full public display since leaving puberty. Be Water is his latest giant step forward, encompassing not only our shared experience and imagination but our humanity too, and that is a triumph no matter what age you are or find yourself in.

Mike Jurkovic (All About Jazz)