{"id":10646,"date":"2025-06-12T23:25:33","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T04:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=10646"},"modified":"2025-06-22T20:57:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T01:57:19","slug":"letting-spirit-amina-claudine-myers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/letting-spirit-amina-claudine-myers\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting the Spirit In: A Conversation with Amina Claudine Myers on ‘Solace of the Mind’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\u2019 Solace of the Mind<\/em> (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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s sole sonic partner. With Solace of the Mind<\/em>, 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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a song like the hymnal \u201cAfrican Blues,\u201d 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<\/em> (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\u2019s 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<\/em> jumps into these thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myers states that her music comes directly from God, and the spiritual elements of the NEA Jazz Master\u2019s work are undeniable. Whether on a church song like \u201cSteal Away\u201d 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<\/em> 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\u2019s mother (\u201cSong for Mother E\u201d) or other artists whose legacies continue to endure (\u201cHymn for John Lee Hooker\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unquestionably, an album that explores faith and connections with loved ones will be inherently personal to the artist. That is certainly true of Myers\u2019 latest solo outing, but through its beauty and sincerity, it also forges an intimate bond with the listener. Solace of the Mind<\/em> 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\u2019s ills? Probably not. But perhaps that is not the point. In the original \u201cAfrican Blues,\u201d 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<\/em> nourishes the listener with both so they can refocus and grow on their own. Perhaps that is all we have left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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