Keys to the High Way

I am always looking for a way to distill the spectrum of influences and guides who I've tried to stay true to all along the way. That comes out in music or poetry or both. I resonate with Amilcar Cabral's thought that culture contains the seed of resistance that becomes the flower of revolution. This recording begins with a track that captures one of my takes on that, One for the Festival.

Although I humbly place my art in the context of jazz, Who defines jazz and how? is a question. I have chosen to understand jazz as a process in which history and improvisation play together to suggest and craft a future. In that spirit there is always a place for earlier forms, folk forms. And the music of the folk is music of resistance and protest. In what I can think of as a pure form, Alex and Harriet Bagwell perform two a cappella duets, Eyes on the Prize and Steal Away.

Between the past and the future, there is the present. No matter what has happened before, and no matter what may happen later, our choices and our actions now are what we can control —it is Up to Now.

The subtitle of the CD, this folk evening, is a phrase lifted from the poem "No Pamphleteering But In Things We Do" by Q.R Hand, a poet with whom I've worked extensively for decades. When I first saw the phrase it stirred my imagination about "folk" as a noun and as an adjective. It led me to write a poem, and in this recording I created a musical setting for it as a duet (voice and alto clarinet) with Thomas McKennie.

Working with pianist Jim Washington for the first time, I was able to realize some kinds of approaches new to me. As a duet, for Travels of A Zen Baptist, we were able to shape a succinct image. As a trio, along with violinist Sandra Poindexter we recorded Up to Now, Synesthesia and After the Rain.

The full quintet (Jordan, Poindexter, Evangelista, Hunt and Hoffman) performs Out Posts; Bittersweet/Serenade to a Cuckoo; and Flora and Fauna. On A Key to the High Way, a brief coda at the end includes Alex Bagwell, Harriet Bagwell, and Thomas Mckennie. And that is the same personnel on People Get Ready (minus Jordan).

released July 31, 2020