When the Distance Is Blue

When the Distance Is Blue is pianist/composer/improvisor Macie Stewarts International Anthem debut. Its theme is about the spaces between -- events, things, people, places, emotions, mental and meditation states, etc. -- viewed as unrequited longing for what is unnameable. This eight-track cycle began in 2023 in Chicago. Stewart prepared the piano with coins and contact mics inserted between or resting on its strings and filtered through a guitar amp. When combined with the instruments organic sound, they created adventurous sounds rich in texture and harmonic possibility, all ripe for improvisation. As she experimented, she added field-recorded voices captured during periods of international touring. Her intention: to create music that evoked a nostalgia for the unnameable. Her collaborators -- cellist Lia Kohl, violist Whitney Johnson (aka Matchess), and double bassist Zach Moore -- selectively improvise on these tracks separately and together, and recontextualize them. The album title comes from activist Rebecca Solnits wonderfully poignant book of essays A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Opener "I Forget How to Remember My Dreams" is in duet with Kohl. Stewarts chords are major and majestic, adorned with upper-register nuances. Kohl bows in harmony but adds drama in her approach, juxtaposing arco chords with subtle single-line harmonies in response to the pianists improvisation. Its followed by the brief "Tsukiji," with field recordings captured at a busy Tokyo fish market that whisper off into the droning, hypnotic "Murmuration/Memorization." Cello, viola, and arco bass interact with one another and Stewarts hushed piano. The single "Spring Becomes You, Spring Becomes New" showcases astonishingly beautiful tonalities and harmonics from her prepared piano. Ambient, organic piano sounds are juxtaposed as soft violin hovers in the backdrop before a chord pattern emerges and the tune moves into more focused terrain. It is breathtaking. "Stairwell (Before and After)," offers a field recording of a vocal improv cut in a stairwell at the Philharmonie de Paris, France. Interestingly, Stewart evokes and alters the piano line from the first selection on Brian Enos Music for Airports. The nearly silent vocal interacts with prepared and natural pianos that emerge, float, and retreat in ghostly harmony. "What Fills You Up Wont Leave an Empty Cup" offers plucked violin and cello strings that meet her voice in ether. They play a pattern at once spacious and edgeless. The string players join the prepared piano in nearly call-and-response cadence, while the vocal is offered in syncopated rounds. Gently bowed cello and violin are buoyed by a skeletal double bass played arco and field recordings captured at Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan. They shimmer underneath Stewarts piano in muted high register and add a lyric component as strings and bass continue to dialogue; they all eventually surrender to a droning bowed bassline. Over 38 minutes, When the Distance Is Blue gently, quietly, and poignantly travels through bardos -- the spaces between -- not seeking resolution, but a name for the composers unanswered longing, and ours. ~ Thom Jurek