Beijing-born, New York-based vocalist/composer Annie Chen offers an impassioned plea for environmental stewardship on the stunning* Guardians*
Due out February 23, 2024 on JZ Music, the album features a multinational ensemble with Vitor Gonçalves, Alex LoRe, Fung Chern Hwei, Marius Duboule, Satoshi Takeishi and Mathew Muntz
“[Chen’s] understanding of music from the Eastern Hemisphere and the ways it’s fused to jazz melody is her unique skill as a singer, composer and leader… This clear-eyed fusion of East and West with an avant-garde twist is Chen’s contribution to contemporary currents of international jazz.” – Dave Wayne, DownBeat
“Annie Chen’s music is as individualistic as it is ambitious – and it is very ambitious.” – delarue, Lucid Culture
It was the dead of winter when Annie Chen visited Acadia National Park in Maine for the first time, but the landscape was nonetheless alive with flora and fauna. For the Beijing-born, New York-based vocalist and composer, the experience sparked a profound awakening to the intricate relationships connecting humanity, the animal kingdom, and the natural world.
That inspiration resulted in the “Guardians Suite,” the moving four-part work that is the beating heart of Chen’s stunning new album, Guardians. Due out February 23, 2024 from JZ Music, Guardians urges Chen’s listeners to serve as protectors of the natural world, vividly depicting the splendors of animal life on land and sea, the empathetic potential of the human soul, and the dire outcome possible if we continue to neglect the planet’s finite resources.
To breathe life into this ode to our shared home, Chen has appropriately assembled a global array of musicians for her diverse (in origins and talents) seven-piece ensemble. In addition to the Chinese-born Chen, the group includes Malaysian native Fung Chern Hwei on violin and viola; Swiss-French guitarist Marius Duboule; Brazilian pianist and accordionist Vitor Gonçalves; Japanese drummer and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi; and Americans Alex LoRe (alto sax, flute and bass clarinet) and bassist Mathew Muntz, who also plays the meh, a rare Croatian bagpipe.
Chen’s musical interests also cross multiple borders, sometimes within the space of a single composition. Guardians opens with the first of two pieces on the album of Polish origin, an element that can be traced to the singer’s longstanding collaboration with Warsaw-born guitarist Rafał Sarnecki. “Rozpacz (Despair)” was written by Zbigniew Namyslowski, a jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist who passed away in February 2022. In the tune’s anguished expressiveness Chen found an unexpected connection to the tragic storytelling of the Beijing Opera. She adapted the lyrics from the classic opera “Farewell My Concubine,” in which a king is besieged by his enemies; in the context of the album’s core message, the timeworn romance becomes a cautionary tale of living on a planet faced with environmental catastrophe.
“It's a very sad story,” Chen explains. “I wanted to allow people to feel the emotion of the king surrounded by his enemies. If we don't do anything about the environment, human beings will also find themselves in an impossible situation.”
One possible outcome is depicted in Chen’s “Underground Dance,” whose spiraling accordion-guitar- vocal melody conjures the frenzied gyrations of a species driven into the underworld. “Under the world, the bridge to sky was broken,” laments Chen’s post-apocalyptic lyric. “There’s a tearing bloodless moon, losing light of the land.”
Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda contributes “Rosemary’s Lullaby,” the haunting, singsong theme from the classic 1968 horror film Rosemary’s Baby. Chen’s rendition foregoes the infernal implications of the movie in favor of treating the piece as a melancholy lullaby, with new lyrics expressing hope for a new generation. “I’m around the age when a lot of people are having children,” the singer says. “I feel so bad when I see all the little kids growing up when this world is so crazy. This is a song of hope for our future, expressing my wish that our children will grow up sweet and strong and help to make a better world.”
The Middle Eastern flavors of “Güle Güle Istanbul,” fueled by the unusual combination of Muntz’s meh and Gonçalves’ accordion, were inspired by a close friend of Chen’s who returned to his native Turkey from New York during the pandemic. It’s a song of farewell that contends with the impermanence of time and relationships, even under the best of circumstances. “I picture life like a bus ride,” Chen describes. “You meet people when they get on the bus, and some of them get off at their stop and other people get on. You never know who will be there at the end of the ride.”
The second half of the album is focused on the “Guardians Suite,” beginning with the stark voice-and-drums opening narration of “The Northern Eyes.” This first movement is Chen’s most direct plea for environmental stewardship. The second movement, “The Whale River Song,” evokes whale song in its heart-rending depiction of the phenomenon of the massive beasts committing suicide by beaching themselves when trapped in polluted waters. The atmospheric “Jellyfish All Around” immerses the listener in what at first appears to be an ocean full of the amorphous creatures, only to reveal that the jellyfish are, in fact, countless plastic bags clogging the waterways. The suite and the album conclude with “Vanished Tails, No Return,” a programmatic portrait of a fox hunt, in which the dying animal turns out to be the last of its species. Chen drew on her feelings upon visiting the Extinct Animal Graveyard in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Zoo, which provides a tombstone for extinct species.
Chen discovered jazz through her father, a translator who traveled often between Beijing and the U.S. as she was growing up. Influenced by the likes of Carmen McRae, Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln while hearing the sounds of Beijing Opera at home, Chen discovered a singular voice that bridged the two worlds. She hopes to return the favor with the environmental message of Guardians, one that she hopes is heard at least as loudly in her native country as it may be in her adopted home.
“I get the feeling sometimes that people don’t realize how critical our situation is,” she says. “I’m hoping this music will inspire some listeners to realize how beautiful our world is and that we have a duty to preserve it, for our generation and those to come.”
Annie Chen is a vocalist, composer and bandleader from Beijing, based in New York since 2013. Her distinctive style draws on a rich continuum of musical traditions from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. This creative vision - showcased on her releases Pisces the Dreamer (2014), Secret Treetop (2018) and Guardians (2024) - is supported by years of experience in China’s jazz, blues, and funk scenes as well as active study and collaboration within New York’s vibrant jazz community. Chen began her study of classical piano at the age of four, attending Beijing’s prestigious Central Conservatory of Music. She traveled to New York in 2010 to study at Manhattan School of Music and Queens College. As part of her mission to forge connections between distant musical worlds, she co-hosted JZ Club on Air, a radio show that exposes Chinese audiences to the diverse and forward-thinking jazz emerging from New York.
Annie Chen – Guardians
JZ Music – JZC24001– Recorded December 8, 2022 & May 7, 2023
Release date February 23, 2024
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