Sounding Line does not announce itself loudly. It arrives the way a thought does—already in progress, already carrying weight. From the first notes, there is a sense that this music has been unfolding long before the listener pressed play, and will continue long after it fades.
At the center of the album is a kind of quiet inquiry. The piano does not dominate; it listens, responds, refracts. Each phrase feels considered but not calculated, as though it is discovering its own shape in real time. The music moves with a deliberate patience, allowing space to become as expressive as sound. Silences are not gaps—they are extensions, places where meaning gathers.
There is an undercurrent of dialogue throughout the record. Not in a literal, call-and-response sense, but in the way ideas seem to overlap, diverge, and return transformed. Melodies appear like fragments of memory—familiar in contour, yet altered in tone, as if viewed through shifting light. Harmony is treated less as a fixed structure and more as terrain, something to move across rather than settle into.
What gives Sounding Line its distinct character is its balance between clarity and ambiguity. Certain passages feel almost architectural, with clean lines and precise angles, while others dissolve into something more fluid and atmospheric. The transitions between these states are seamless, creating a sense of constant motion without ever feeling hurried. Time stretches and contracts; rhythm breathes.
The ensemble contributes to this sense of depth in subtle but essential ways. No voice feels ornamental. Each instrument enters with purpose, sometimes reinforcing the piano’s direction, sometimes gently redirecting it. The result is a collective sound that feels organic—less like a group performing together, and more like a shared consciousness taking shape.
There is also a tactile quality to the album, a sensitivity to texture that reveals itself in small details: the weight of a chord, the resonance that lingers just a moment longer than expected, the slight shift in articulation that changes the emotional color of a phrase. These details accumulate, giving the music a physical presence that feels almost tangible.
As the album progresses, it begins to feel less like a sequence of pieces and more like a single, continuous arc. Themes do not resolve so much as evolve. Ideas are revisited from different angles, deepened rather than concluded. By the time the final moments arrive, there is no sense of closure in the conventional sense—only a quiet settling, as if the music has reached a point of temporary rest.
The title itself becomes clearer in retrospect. A sounding line is used to measure depth, but it does so indirectly, by reaching into what cannot be seen. This album operates in much the same way. It does not present its meaning on the surface. Instead, it invites the listener to follow it downward, to trace its contours, to sit with its uncertainties.
And in doing so, it offers something rare: not just something to hear, but something to inhabit.
“Sounding Line” was inspired by the connection between Mary Lou Williams and Thelonious Monk, both as pianist/composers and in their personal friendship. I was interested in the musical relationships I heard between aspects of Williams’s compositions, especially harmonically, and Monk tunes I knew (for example, the chromatic dominant chord movement in both “Aries” from Williams’s “Zodiac Suite” and Monk’s “Epistrophy”). Thinking about the dialogue between the two led to the idea of playing in different duos to explore these connections through new conversations. The album features many wonderful players from the Bay Area including Ambrose Akinmusire, Ben Goldberg, John Santos, Hamir Atwal, Dillon Vado and Darren Johnston,- an interview with us said pianist, composer Carmen Staaf.
We recommend purchasing this CD right here and enjoying it!
