Letting the Spirit In: A Conversation with Amina Claudine Myers on ‘Solace of the Mind’

In a music so heavily built around collective communication, there is something inherently special about a solo performance. Far too often, playing unaccompanied is perceived as a show of virtuosity. While true mastery is requisite for a solo performance to reach its full potential, the same can be said for any type of performance, from a lone musician to a large ensemble. No, a truly masterful solo performance is done in full recognition that even without living and breathing people within arms reach, the artist is never truly alone. Amina Claudine Myers’ Solace of the Mind (Red Hook, 2025) is a rare recording that powerfully captures the truth that such a setting is a conversation between the artist and many others. 

First is a communication with silence. A note not struck is an invitation for space to fill and enter the room. While silence is an inescapable element of all music, it adopts increased importance in the solo context as the artist’s sole sonic partner. With Solace of the Mind, space wraps around the notes, giving each added weight. Such openness to silence is ultimately an act of maturity possible only from an artist like Myers, who has spent the last sixty years traversing a wide range of music of gospel, classical, jazz, and the Blues and treating them as a unified whole. The dedication of a producer like Sun Chung, who is well-versed in treating silence with respect through his years at ECM Records, certainly helps as well.  

On a song like the hymnal “African Blues,” the resonances are allowed to lie and dissolve gently into nothingness. In this version of the song, Myers abandons the wordless vocals of her original from Salutes Bessie Smith (Leo, 1980). Yet the new edition suggests the human voice perhaps even more than the first one. There is something inherently organic about her piano’s tone which sounds as if the modulation of tired vocal chords rather than a predetermined set of notes. In pouring her voice into the keys, Myers explores relationships of deep significance. Even after three hundred thousand years, there is still much that humanity does not fully understand about this world. Issues that even the wisest geniuses have struggled to answer. Questions that even the inevitable artificial superintelligence, allegedly free of human failings, would still be left pondering. Solace of the Mind jumps into these thoughts.

Myers states that her music comes directly from God, and the spiritual elements of the NEA Jazz Master’s work are undeniable. Whether on a church song like “Steal Away” or her own compositions, one feels as if they are witnessing something larger than just a single person sitting at a bench in a studio. There is an inherent warmth across Solace of the Mind that is deeply moving, easily understood, yet difficult to quantify. This connection to something larger also manifests in a conjuring of those passed; people whose bodies are no longer with us but whose spirits remain, whether the artist’s mother (“Song for Mother E”) or other artists whose legacies continue to endure (“Hymn for John Lee Hooker”). 

Unquestionably, an album that explores faith and connections with loved ones will be inherently personal to the artist. That is certainly true of Myers’ latest solo outing, but through its beauty and sincerity, it also forges an intimate bond with the listener. Solace of the Mind is a potent antidote to the socially noxious times in which we find ourselves. Will a single forty-one-minute recording unilaterally solve all of the world’s ills? Probably not. But perhaps that is not the point. In the original “African Blues,” civil rights icon James Baldwin found clarity and the tranquility needed to continue his push for justice. Perseverance requires meditation and reflection. Solace of the Mind nourishes the listener with both so they can refocus and grow on their own. Perhaps that is all we have left.

PostGenre: It is great that you are releasing a new solo piano album. Your solo piece, “When Was’” was one of the highlights of your last record, Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens (Red Hook, 2024), with Wadada Leo Smith. 

Amina Claudine Myers: Actually, Wadada called me right before you did. 

We’re getting ready to do another album together. He called to see how I was doing and told me he was gonna send me some music. He is planning to send me three compositions this weekend by e-mail. I really enjoyed doing that record with him. 

To be honest with you, “When Was” is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. I found the way it turned out to be very beautiful. But I created it right there [in the recording studio]. I would never be able to play it the same way again. I just started playing, and what is on the record is what came out. That was the spirit working. But that doesn’t always happen. 

PG: What do you enjoy most about playing solo? 

ACM: When playing solo, you can do anything that you want to do. You can play whatever creation comes up at any time. It’s completely free and open. You can let yourself go and let your spirit come into your music. With a trio or with other band members, of course, things are different. When you play with other musicians, you listen to each other and go with the flow of where the music is going. But there is nothing like the freedom of playing solo piano. Anything is possible. 

PG: Is the title, Solace of the Mind, primarily intended to reflect the peacefulness you are seeking to provide to the listener through your music or your own mindset when creating it?

ACM: Well, the music is for people to hear and hopefully meditate on. I hope it gives them calmness and relaxation when they hear the music. I hope it brings back memories as well. That’s why I called it Solace of the Mind.  Sometimes, people can hear the music and just relax with it. They can lay back, close their eyes, and let the music inspire them or give them calmness and peace. 

PG: It is interesting then that the first piece on the album is “African Blues.” James Baldwin used to listen to that particular piece to give himself some peace of mind, right?

ACM: Yes. Years ago, someone called me from London to ask me to come and perform at [Trinidadian historian] C.L.R. James’ memorial service. He wrote a lot on the game of cricket, among other things. I asked his family how they knew about me, and they said C.L.R. was friends with James Baldwin. And whenever he was depressed, he would listen to “African Blues“ to cheer himself up. I was delighted to hear that because I love James Baldwin’s work. His truth, sincerity, and love for his people are evident in his writings. And so, I played “African Blues” at C.L.R. James’ service but more as a hymn that was very different from my original recording of the piece.

PG: Because James Baldwin was such a significant civil rights leader, do you have any thoughts on how music can enact social change for the positive? 

ACM: Well, I don’t know. I just know that, hopefully, my music can inspire people. I try to give love and inspiration through the music to bring back thoughts of positiveness and love. I hope the music brings back [to listeners] positive memories and images of their past; of people who raised them and their life experiences. I want to express love through the music.  Someone told me that, sometimes, when they hear my music, it makes them cry. Not in a negative way, but in joy over the images it evokes for them. That’s what I hope for.

PG: The new version of “African Blues,” in particular, is gorgeous. Do you remember the story of when you wrote that song? 

ACM: Cecil McBee was the bass player on that record [Salutes Bessie Smith (Leo, 1980)]. He came over to my house. I sat on the [piano] stool and just started playing the song. Little pieces of the melody just came to me on the spot. Then we went into the studio, Big Apple Studio, and started to stretch it out there until the piece was about fifteen minutes long. It was created and developed in the studio as we were recording. That song was when I first started singing without words. When I did, I thought about the people in Africa, with all that was going on with apartheid. I didn’t need words to express those things, just sounds could convey the feelings. We had people going through suffering through the hard times and bad times, and  “African Blues” was an expression of the spirits of the people and what they had to go through. 

PG: When writing your compositions, is it generally your approach to create little pieces of harmonic ideas and then fill in the rest in the studio?

ACM: Well, when I get ideas, I write them down and develop them later. There are some things I thought of years ago and am still working on. So, a song like “Cairo” was a shorter version, but I have expanded it to another direction now. 

”Song for Mother E” was originally from the first record I did with Pheeroan AkLaff on drums [Song for Mother E (Leo, 1980)]. It was dedicated to my mother. On the new record, it starts off improvising with the melody not until the end, much more stretched out than when I first recorded it.  Some compositions lay around for a few bars, then I get back to it. 

I also have other compositions that I haven’t recorded yet because I have to live and do other things. Some musicians are at the piano all day, all the time. I’m not like that. There are other things I have to do besides sit at the piano all day. It takes time. I develop my songs more as I get older. Sometimes, it takes months or, maybe even several years before a song reaches where it’s supposed to be; what it is supposed to be. 

For me, in some instances, to fully get the music in my heart, I have to just play it out and not read or write it.  I improvise from my heart. Sometimes if I play from written music, it’s obvious in how it sounds. I did that partly on “Hymn to John Lee Hooker” on this album. I don’t have that piece in my soul yet. I don’t know it well enough to play it without even thinking about it and just let the spirit take over. So, I’m still working on it.

PG: When the songs do develop, why do you feel that is? You have indicated that music comes from God. Presumably, over time, your relationship with God has deepened. So, are the songs emerging from a deeper relationship with God or just merely having more time to think about a given piece? 

ACM: Both, but you still have to work. You have to sit at the piano and just play. You need to try different things and see what happens. But your fingers need to be in shape. You need to technically be at the piano to keep your fingers limber. And so they can do things. I also need a good piano. I’ve done concerts where the piano has been so stiff that I couldn’t play how I wanted to play. But you do have to work at the piano and study. Practice what you’re doing, and you will get more ideas when you do. If you do that, then you can relax, and when the spirit comes in, you work with the spirit. Music is a gift from God, and his message comes through with love and inspiration. I need to be an instrument for him, which means I need to keep my fingers and everything together. And that comes from practicing. 

PG:  You perform both secular and church songs. Do you feel closer to God when doing the church songs?

ACM: Not really, because God is in all the music. God gives us talent. And we use the talent that God gives us in anything we do, anything we take pride in. It’s not just music. Cooking. Construction work. Anything you can do, it all comes from God. So regardless of what music I play, it’s all equally from God. 

PG: One thing that does set the church music apart is that you heard much of it during your childhood. You have previously spoken about other sounds from your youth in rural Arkansas: things like buzzing bees, bird calls, and crickets. Have you ever tried to replicate some of those sounds in your music? 

ACM: Well, one time I did. I wrote a song called “Plowed Fields” which has also been titled “Going Home.” It is based on the true story of a time my mother and I were driving home in Blackwell [, Arkansas] in the countryside, and there was a field being plowed. The dirt was black, and I said that I wish  I could walk in it barefooted. As kids, we were barefoot often, and it was clean dirt. It was all part of country living. And my mother said, “Not me, because I remember when I had soles tied around my feet [instead of shoes].”

PG: Wow.

ACM: I never forgot that. My mother never complained about her upbringing, but she had a tough one. She lost her mother when she was two years old. She lost her father, my grandfather, when she was twelve years old. And the people who raised her – her stepmother’s family – were very poor. 

On the drive with my mother, we reached where we were going, to my great aunt’s house. She had raised me and partly raised my mother because she was older. At her house, you could hear the grass growing. You could hear the crickets day and night. I was sitting out on the porch with my melodica. When I play the song in concert now, I use the harmonica. But at that time in Arkansas, I had a melodica with me, and I tried to emulate the sounds of the crickets. It couldn’t be done. But that is where the song “Country Girl” came from. 

PG: As far as reflecting on your mother’s upbringing, did those stories guide you at all when you wrote “Song for Mother E” in honor of her?

ACM: No. When I first played it, it didn’t have a title. It was only once I listened to it that I knew I wanted to dedicate it to my mother because of the sound and the feeling I felt in creating it. I felt it was very peaceful and calm sounding. 

PG: Your original version of “Song for Mother E” was recorded with Pheeroan AkLaff on drums. Do you feel that when you play the piece solo, you typically approach it a bit more percussively because of the absence of a drummer? 

ACM: I just play it as I play it. I use different parts, sometimes over the upper register, and then I move down to the bottom part, where it gets intense. I’m just trying to create different sounds of feelings and experiences that the listener can draw from in their life. And for me, I try to emphasize the positive. I try to live in such a manner where I view things in a very positive light.  We all have health issues and other problems. But if we try to live life in a positive way, the good memories will come to you.

‘Solace of the Mind’ will be released on June 20, 2024 on Red Hook Records. You can purchase it on Bandcamp. More information on Amina Claudine Myers is available on her website.

Photo credit: Crystal Blake