Zach Adleman - LYDIALIEBMAN.COM

WE MAKE: Stories for a New Day
Release Date: October 25, 2024
Label: Cellar Music Group

Zach Adleman has reflected on the defining experiences of years past and distilled them into music. These compositions each possess a deeply human cry for people to create, build up, appreciate, and to take in the bountiful life that is around them. When unified, these separate tales come together on his Cellar Music Group debut WE MAKE: Stories for a New Day, a comprehensive anthem that speaks to the souls of its listeners and beckons them out into something more.

Releasing October 25, the album’s title is multifaceted and perfectly encapsulates Adleman’s vision for his music. By starting with “WE”, Adleman immediately signals that this album is about the collective and its call and purpose includes every listener. “The title is a call to action,” Adleman says. “I encourage everyone to connect and make something together, especially given our differences. Listen to one another and appreciate the fact that we can be in the same room as one another, and don’t let us take that for granted post pandemic.” If the album itself is the call, then each track on the album is an individual story that speaks to the heart of humanity. Like fables and parables of old, these stories aim to stir and rouse something within the audience that inspires them to act. Inasmuch as listening to Adleman’s music is an act of joy, it is also an act of edification. Adleman summarizes this succinctly yet emotively: “the songs are the ‘stories’ for the ‘new day’ that can be made through us ‘making’ things together.”

Musically, each piece is distinct. Thematically, each piece is poignant. Comprising almost entirely of original compositions, WE MAKE: Stories for a New Day uses every track to convey a specific message and lesson. Perfectly exemplifying this is “Ballad for the Night”, a musical tribute to the importance nighttime holds. “This song is meant to highlight one of the most personal, important, and unique aspects of my life: my walks in Riverside Park where I think, contemplate, bring loved ones/friends, take calls, journal, and have picnics,” Adleman says. “It’s a place that may seem mundane to some, but to me it’s very special.” The melody, carried by alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, feels conversational and yet vulnerable as listeners get a window into one of Adleman’s most intimate rituals. The piece also acknowledges the night’s value for the wider musician community. For musicians, the night is one’s livelihood and time to come alive. Later, after settling down, the night is also the time to join with dearest friends and family. “I loved writing this song, and I meant every note I put in it,” Adleman remembers.

One of this album’s masterful touches is that while being an album of many narratives, in no way does it sacrifice groove for storytelling. In fact, the contrary is often true. An ideal example is “In Between Places”, a piece whose initial idea was composed on a public piano sitting beside a covered bus stop in Lynchburg, Virginia. The piece’s title and its emotive feel are in reference to Adleman’s state of having ties to various cities. “This song is about my experience living in between where I grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, my unfurnished apartment in New York City, all the while playing gigs in Virginia,” Adleman says. “I was stuck in between these 3 places.” The piece leans heavily into the classic swing groove as its vehicle of choice, both to carry the story along and for the layered significance of swing itself. “Swing is at the core of what’s significant about jazz,” Adleman explains. “Swing is a musical force that came from the darkest of times in America’s history: African enslavement. The practice of swing generates feelings of freedom and a contagious positive outlook on life with the capacity to make others feel better.”

The album’s semi-title track “WE MAKE” powerfully embodies much of the album’s message. Written during and inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, this piece narrates the lifespan of the three-year period through a vast series of highly intentional melodies, created by Adleman specifically to sound “horribly beautiful”. Each soloist carries different aspects and emotions of that tumultuous time with them in their performance as if acting it out on stage. These solos, especially those by Sarah Hanahan (alto saxophone) and Luther Allison (piano) saliently summarize the lifecycle of the global and personal emotions of this time. “[These solos] really set the tone of what the pandemic meant to me: an intense period trying to get better as a person, as well as society’s growing pains in its attempt to reconcile and cure its ills of racism, inequality, and degradation of the most vulnerable.”

The magnitude of Adleman’s successful storytelling is amplified exponentially by the honesty, mastery, and earnestness with which his ensemble performs. Comprising a roster of musicians known for both their prowess and their emotive playing, Adleman’s band is a star-studded collection featuring the likes of Sarah Hanahan (alto saxophone), Steve Wilson (alto saxophone), Austin Ford (trumpet), Steve Davis (trombone), Luther Allison (piano), Jared Beckstead-Craan (bass), and the bandleader, Zach Adleman (drum set). In describing the qualities he loves about this ensemble, Adleman relays an anecdotal conversation with Isaiah Thompson, the album’s producer. “In the context of forming a band, years ago, Isaiah told me that you need to surround yourself with people who love you,” Adleman reflects. “Initially, I thought, ‘Shouldn’t it be more about you giving out love?’ When I looked around the studio, I saw people who I loved and people who loved me. What Isaiah was saying was when you surround yourself with people who genuinely care about you, they will give you everything they have.” It is this foundational, mutual love shared between Adleman and his ensemble that elevates his music from eloquent vibrations to a deeply felt reverberation through one’s heartstrings into every molecule of one’s being.

WE MAKE: Stories for a New Day is more than an album; it is an offering. Adleman’s vision melds seamlessly with the sonic universes his compositions embody, welcoming a listener and raising them up to step beyond oneself as one looks around with fresh eyes at the new day that is waiting to be made.