Flores Para Verene / Cantos Para Caramina

Tomin Perea-Chamblee has played trombone in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra, as well as various brass and reed instruments in Standing on the Corner Art Ensemble. In 2020, he started recording and self-releasing brief solo pieces dedicated to his late grandmother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimers in 2011, and passed away in 2019. The recordings were all versions of compositions by jazz giants such as Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, all played by Tomin on clarinets and cornet. Following these, Tomin then recorded and released songs dedicated to his sister Caramina, starting with interpretations of pieces by artists like John Coltrane and Eddie Gale, then followed by a series of original keyboard compositions. All of these pieces were compiled as a 2024 album release by International Anthem, Flores Para Verene/Cantos Para Caramina. The pieces that make up Flores Para Verene are all dedicated to their composers and players. Tomins multi-tracked clarinets and cornets solemnly illustrate the songs themes, distilling them to their essence instead of expanding on them through solos and improvisation. It comes across like an audio scrapbook of intimate family moments, switching from recollections of sorrowful times to joyous celebrations with the turn of each page. Mingus "Fables of Faubus" and J.J. Johnsons "Aquarius" are particularly spirited, but not overstated, and two versions of Ellingtons "Come Sunday" are more mournful. Tomin layers bass clarinet and trumpet (one in each channel) on Albert Aylers "Spirits Rejoice," which is both ghostly and gleeful. The music continues in a more spiritual aura with pieces like "The Prayer" by John Jamyll Jones, which has a bit more of a rhythmic stride than some of the others, and the more meditative "Humility in the Light of the Creator" by Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre. The keyboard pieces at the end are celebrations of love and life, and they each receive a little more time to shine than most of the others. Theyre fragile and curious but glimmer brightly, and seem to signal a new beginning, logically progressing from the previous pieces honoring of the past. ~ Paul Simpson