'Lumen' by Bill Laurance

The wondrous duality of the great Bill Laurance is perhaps best showcased via two projects that are being unveiled within two months of each other: November of this year will boast arguably the most expansive and ambitious project by the Texan fusion heroes Snarky Puppy and their second recording alongside the revered Metropole Orkest for 'Somni'.  'Somni' will serve as the follow-up to the two factions' previous collaboration - the Grammy-winning 'Sylva' in 2015 - and is a performance recorded over three days in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and featuring over seventy musicians (72, I counted!).  

...Conversely, that recording is preceded by Bill Laurance's 'Lumen'....  A project that positions Laurance solo on a piano in a South London church at 3am.

As I say, very little else could help explain the limitless scope that Bill Laurance has managed to afford himself as an artist and collaborator.  It's a point I may have made for previous Bill Laurance releases but each project continually finds the pianist and composer able to recontextualise his music in accordance to the project he's working on... whether that be the explosive jazz-funk fusion of Snarky Puppy, his two-handers with Snarky founder Michael League, his affections for classical compositions alongside The Untold Orchestra or his work alongside the WDR Big Band. 

Each project boasts a fresh-faced, eagle-eyed clean slate that finds the pianist embracing the challenge of a new page within the Bill Laurance tome.  There's an excellent quote on the 'Lumen' Bandcamp page that finds Laurance describing his approach to the project, "it's simplicity that I'm searching for how to say the most with the least".  It's an elegant and intricate assessment and one that must have hit with something of an ethereal resolution while playing deep into the night.  

'Lumen' thrives within the most intimate of confines and is a record that exists as a result of its very specific time and space.  A spiritual jazz record in the purest sense.  Alice Coltrane once surmised: "The music is within your heart, your soul, your spirit, and this is all I did when I sat at piano.  I just go within."  Again, beautiful words that beg the question of whether 'within' serves as a spiritual connection to a higher entity around us or whether it is a spiritual connection to another plane of ourselves.

Bill Laurance sat at a piano in St Faith's Church at 3am and made a connection with... only Bill Laurance knows that, but listeners have the opportunity to now press play and make their own connections with compositions that are brilliantly sublime and introspective and genuinely their own brand of magic.