{"id":24243,"date":"2022-12-07T05:30:50","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T10:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24243"},"modified":"2022-12-07T07:53:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T12:53:52","slug":"album-review-connie-han-secrets-of-inanna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/07\/album-review-connie-han-secrets-of-inanna\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Connie Han &#8212; Secrets of Inanna"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24244\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/connie_han.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/connie_han.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/connie_han-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/connie_han-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>There was a time when jazz was edgy, boundary-pushing and even threatening (albeit in a good way). Some may disagree, but other than free jazz \u2013 which is frankly too forbidding for even most in the already tiny slice of the market that is jazz aficionados \u2013 much of today\u2019s jazz isn\u2019t earth-shaking.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, there are plenty of exceptions. And the persona and music of Connie Han fall into that category. Pianist Han demonstrates breathtaking technique on piano (and electric piano) throughout <i>Secrets of Inanna<\/i>. Her music can be thought of as a modern-day take on \u201870s spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and other innovators, but her approach is more rooted in accessible melodic concepts.<\/p>\n<p>That said, Han isn\u2019t afraid to head out there on tracks like \u201cEreshkigal of the Underworld,\u201d with complex percussion lines crisscrossing her glistening, assured runs across the ivories. Bassist John Patitucci is on hand to provide a complex, sympathetic and intriguing bottom-end, and his crackling yet subtle instrumental dialogue with drummer Bill Wysaske is thrilling.<\/p>\n<p>As it happens, Wysaske (who\u2019s also her producer) taught Han music in high school. But the pianist didn\u2019t continue her formal musical training beyond 12<sup>th<\/sup> grade, and all available evidence suggests that she made the right call to simply get on with her career.<\/p>\n<p>And Han is the star of this show; her keyboards are at the center of every piece, and her skill, power and finesse are on unyielding display across all twelve tracks. Han composed about half of the album\u2019s material; Wysaske wrote a few, and there\u2019s a Chick Corea cover (\u201cDesert Air\u201d) for good measure. And it all hangs together. And tracks like \u201cMorning Star\u201d demonstrate that Han can take the music in traditional (bop, for example) directions whenever she chooses, all without losing the plot of the album as-a-whole.<\/p>\n<p>It hurts not a bit that Connie Han is \u2013 there\u2019s no other way to put it \u2013 a stunner. Take a look at the album cover art (or most promo photos) and you\u2019d be forgiven if you didn\u2019t guess that she\u2019s a jazz artist. She\u2019s also a 26-year old jazz artist whose latest record is her fourth(!) so expect to hear \u2013 and see \u2013 much, much more from this richly talented artist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a time when jazz was edgy, boundary-pushing and even threatening (albeit in a good way). Some may disagree, but other than free jazz \u2013 which is frankly too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,42,49,65],"tags":[4999],"class_list":["post-24243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-instrumental","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-review","tag-connie-han","cat-40-id","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24243"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24385,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24243\/revisions\/24385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}