Ann Sweeten: Still
Orange Band Records

Appreciation for the beauty of pianist Ann Sweeten's music is naturally deepened by awareness of the physical struggles she's experienced: already a two-time breast cancer survivor, the Steinway artist received a leukemia diagnosis in 2017. There's nothing self-pitying about Sweeten and her music, however; Still, like the albums before it, looks to the future with hope, exudes appreciation and gratitude for the life she's had, and favours resilience over surrender. While it's generally classified as New Age, her music transcends strict categorization when it speaks with unfiltered emotional directness.

While Sweeten acknowledges those challenges—in the release booklet, she writes that “after all I've been through in life and with my health struggles, I am still here, both as a person and an artist”—she doesn't dwell on them, choosing instead to focus on the gifts she's received and the many joys, small and large, that make up her life. Fittingly, the album title came to her when she was sitting quietly in her kitchen enjoying a glass of Chardonnay, as simple and everyday a pleasure as there might be. The stillness that enveloped her in that moment stayed with the pianist and prompted the writing of the album's title track, the last of the ten composed for the project.

The album title alludes to the receptivity that stillness brings, to the beauty of nature and its changing seasons but also to the reverberations of one's inner being and the acceptance of life's cycles; had she not chosen Still, Presence might have been an equally apt title. Stylistically, the new collection doesn't depart dramatically from its predecessors and wisely so. Chamber-classical settings that are lyrical and heartfelt, its ten pieces embroider her exquisite Steinway Baby Grand playing with contributions from violinist Charlie Bisharat, cellist Eugene Friesen, English hornist Nancy Rumbel, soprano saxophonist Premik Russell-Tubbs, and French hornist Richard Sebring, esteemed collaborators all.

Windham Hill Records founder Will Ackerman, who's been involved in the production of many Sweeten releases, is again on board, this time as the co-producer of the piano tracks, and also central to the album's sparkling production is Tom Eaton, who mixed and mastered the material and also had a hand in co-producing (with Ann) the non-piano tracks. An impressive kind of sleight-of-hand is in play as some performances were recorded by the musicians in different places and assembled to create the impression of face-to-face interactions. Whereas the performances by Sweeten, Friesen, and Russell-Tubbs were laid down at Imaginary Road Studios in Vermont, those by Rumbel, Bisharat, and Sebring were captured at separate studios in Washington, California, and New Hampshire.

As the opening piece “Distant Clouds” splendidly demonstrates when Bisharat and Rumbel adorn her refined piano expressions with supplicating phrases, the calm of Sweeten's music soothes. With cello and soprano sax punctuating piano, melancholy and longing infuse “Whispers of Spring” with its evocation of winter's survivors desperate for spring's return. Particularly pretty is the lilting waltz “Ebony Light,” which sees Russell-Tubbs exchanging saxophone for alto flute, and Sebring's French horn is a lovely addition to “The River Bleeds the Sky.” Nostalgic longing permeates “Waiting for Fireflies” and its dreamlike evocation of a wondrous summer night. While Sweeten supplements piano with Kurzweil Synthesizer K2500 on “Heaven's Stardust,” the textures generated by the extra keyboard are incorporated as near-subliminal sonic tinting. If “The Crossing” is so-titled to reference the transition from life to death, it treats the prospect of it as a natural stage to be recognized as such and accepted with grace.

May 2025