Tunes of peace
Earlier today I closed the last page of Regime Change, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s epic dissection of the first 15 months of Donald Trump’s second term at president of the United States. It’s a close-quarters observation of megalomania operating in real time, reaching its climax as the US/Israeli attack on Iran founders in the Strait of Hormuz, a hubristic miscalculation which one profoundly hopes will eventually define Trump’s reputation in the eyes of history. One can only wonder at the identity of the source who gave the two New York Times reporters such extraordinary material.
Now I need something to listen to, and here at hand is Peace Anthems, a new album of 10 short pieces by artists associated with Red Hook Records, the label founded five years ago by the producer Sun Chung, whose first release was Hanamichi, by the late pianist Masabumi Kikuchi. The new release, timed to coincide with the anniversary, is specially commissioned by Chung from the artists, who were invited to contribute pieces inspired by the theme of peace.
The trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and the pianist Amina Claudine Myers, whose album Central Park made many best-of-the-year lists in 2024, provide two sketches, “Sonic Requiem X” and “Reflections on Palestine”. Smith also appears on “Three Years Later” with the drummer Andrew Cyrille and the modular synthesiser player Qasim Naqvi, whose solo piece, “Al Badawi”, opens the album. Moor Mother’s invocations and BlankFor.ms’ electronics combine on “Imaginary Lines”. The singer Martha Deribe and the pianist Simone Maggio are heard on “War Is Over”. The guitarist Taylor Deupree, the trombonist Kalia Vandever and the bassist Thomas Morgan contribute Deupree’s composition “Wither Light and Airy”. Kit Downes gets two chances to demonstrate his skill with a pipe organ on “Into the Woods — Three Weary Calls” and “Closing Meditation for OM”, the second of which concludes the sequence.
The mood is restrained and reflective, as if the performers agreed that the message would be allowed to find its way gently into the listeners’ ears. These are little tone poems whose delicacy is their strength. And nowhere is that more apparent than on a piece called “The River of Imjin” by the Korean saxophonist and composer Sungjae Son (photographed above), whose previous release, Near East Quartet, appeared in 2016, at a time when Sun Chung was an in-house producer for the ECM label.
“The River of Imjin”, bearing a name made famous by a battle between Chinese and UN (predominantly British) forces during the Korean War in 1951, finds Son overdubbing his tenor, bass clarinet and pump organ on two choruses of something that sounds like an old Methodist hymn tune. If you have fond memories of Thelonious Monk’s “Abide With Me”, John Surman’s “Doxology” or Don Cherry’s “Desireless”, then this fits right alongside them. After 414 pages describing Trump’s attempt to drag the world into his own darkness, sometimes two minutes and 15 seconds of music is all it takes to switch the light back on.
* Peace Anthems is out now on Red Hook Records. All proceeds will go to the International Red Cross: https://redhookrecords.bandcamp.com/album/peace-anthems
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