A point of stillness

There is a balm in Gilead, according to an African American spiritual whose lines were borrowed from the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah, and there is a profound sense of healing in Solace of the Mind, the new solo album by the pianist and organist Amina Claudine Myers.

Born 83 years ago in Blackwell, Arkansas, Myers moved to Chicago after graduating from music college and became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in 1966. Ten years later she moved to New York. Before this new album, her last one was as a duo with the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, a dedication to Central Park, released a year ago. Her early albums for the Leo label, Song for Mother E and a tribute to Bessie Smith, recorded in 1979 and 1980 respectively, were recently made available on Bandcamp.

She is a musician of great sophistication, rich in imagination and technical resources, but in this recital she pares everything back to the essence and what we hear is her soul. Like Abdullah Ibrahim, she can take an ancient structures and allow it to glow from somewhere deep within. The simpler the hymn and the more straightforwardly it’s played, the great the inner strength it exudes. As long, of course, as the playing is done by an Ibrahim or a Myers.

There are nine original pieces here, starting with a delicately surging reinterpretation of “Song for Mother E”. Others include the brief and stately “Hymn for John Lee Hooker” — more hymn than Hooker — and the rhapsodic “Twilight”. On “Ode to My Ancestors”, recorded at her home, she moves to her Hammond B3 and recites a poem over sustained organ notes which, thanks to a phasing effect, seem to be fluttering in a breeze. The only non-original is the lovely spiritual “Steal Away”, which gently summons a whole world of African American culture; the whole recital seems to pivot around it. The closing benediction is a study in patience and exquisite phrasing titled “Beneath the Sun”.

What you won’t find here is anything remotely resembling a display of virtuosity. What you might discover, amid an increasingly maddened world, is a welcome point of stillness. Highly recommended.

* Amina Claudine Myers’ Solace of the Mind is released on June 20 on the Red Hook label (redhookrecords.com). The uncredited photograph is borrowed from Myers’ website.