Cat Toren's Human Kind: Scintillating Beauty
Panoramic Recordings

The key that unlocks the door to Cat Toren's second Human Kind release is spiritual jazz, but the fifth album from the Vancouver-born, Brooklyn-based pianist is a house of many doors. Three years after the release of the quintet's self-titled debut, Human Kind—Toren plus Xavier Del Castillo (saxophone), Yoshie Fruchter (oud), Jake Leckie (bass), and Matt Honor (drums)—returns with four in-depth explorations. Her sense of timing is acute: after forming the outfit at the time of the 2016 election, Toren wrote and recorded Scintillating Beauty during one of the most turbulent periods in American history. That she continues to espouse an optimistic outlook in the face of mounting chaos testifies, however, to her spirit, said optimism attributable in part to her interest in sound healing (she acquired a Sound Healing Training Certificate from the Sage Academy in Woodstock, NY) and the recent birth of her first daughter. Consistent with that outlook, Scintillating Beauty brims with imagination and infectious energy.

Recorded at Tedesco Studios in New Jersey on January 12, 2019, the album's positive tone is reflected in the inclusion of two Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes on the inner sleeve about shared humanity and brotherhood (“Let us all hope that … in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty”) plus Toren's own text, which regards improvisation metaphorically in the way musicians support each other (“our actions affect each other, we depend on one another”). She consciously fashioned the album to reflect that view: “Through these forty minutes of music, we move through light and dark aspects of being human, finishing on a hopeful groove. Hope is our champion. It is our reason for action.”

Augmenting the quintet on the adventurous opener, “Radiance in Veils,” is Stephanie Rooker, a professional sound healing facilitator who's credited with chimes, tuning forks, and singing bowls (aside from piano, Toren is credited on the album with the same instruments plus rattles and bells). The music awakens gently with tinkling chimes and bells joined by piano sprinkles and hushed gestures from sax and oud. The incantatory, chant-like feel of the introduction invokes spiritual jazz in its classic form; the music then blossoms with full-throated saxophone expressions and drama seeping into the group interplay. Five minutes in, Leckie's pulse marks the music's transition from rubato to vamp, after which a free-wheeling Del Castillo engenders similarly open-form playing from the others. The piece progresses through rhapsodic and aggressive sections, the music's unfolding suggesting life's stages, with everything from innocence and struggle integral to the experience. The quintet's fluid advance through this multi-scenic journey, some of its episodes highly structured and others freer, speaks to the strong rapport between its members.

Its title derived from one of the MLK Jr. quotes (“We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality”), “Garment of Destiny” opens with explorative solos by Toren and Fruchter, with Leckie and a brushes-wielding Honor supporting them responsively. With sax added as the puzzle's final piece, the group digs into the seven-minute improv in a manner consistent with Toren's metaphorical understanding of the form. “Ignus Fatuus” exchanges the general spiritual jazz dimension of the album for a refreshing exercise in classic swing, Toren showing she can solo in a rollicking style as easily as play freely. An element of dark humour informs the romp, and echoes of Monk and Mingus are audible in the unusual melodic character of the material and the muscularity of the playing.

October 2020