ALEX McLAUGHLIN, A Brand New State

In 2022, when renowned bassist, composer and educator Alex McLaughlin left his position as a teaching assistant at Pennsylvania State University for a gig as a rehearsal bassist at the Idyllwild Arts Academy in the beautiful Southern California mountain town, he could probably have scarcely imagined that just a few years later, he would not only be releasing a stellar debut album – the aptly titled A Brand New State – featuring guest trumpeter Jeremy Pelt but sharing a handful of original gems inspired by his new environs.

While assuming many other duties on his path to becoming the school’s Director of the Jazz Program, his friend, Grammy winning drummer, educator and author Ulysses Owens Jr. offered to come out to California to produce an album – with the important caveat that it have only original compositions rather than another well-played album of standards. The result is a stylistically varied, dynamically polyrhythmic journey infused with the dazzling improvisations and adventurous insights of Pelt and L.A. vets Jeremy Siskind (piano) and Tina Raymond (drums).

The quartet collectively make splendid musical tour guides through the Idyllwild-centric tunes, starting with the boisterous heavily percussive “Trailhead”, inspired by the particularly intense trail known as Devil’s Slide. McLaughlin goes on a more spiritual excursion on the rumbling, hard swinging “Elevation,” which paints a spirited metaphor for being between two places in life, inspired equally by Joe Henderson’s “Isotope” and Idyllwild’s location between Tahquitz Peak and Mt. Atlas.

Finally, there’s the tune dedicated in“Lily” (named after Tahquitz Peak’s other name Lily Rock), which taps into the original indigenous inhabitants’ spiritual beliefs about death, reflected in both the lyrical, easy swaying opening segment, the higher energy middle section and graceful solos by Siskind and McLaughlin. Though Idyllwild is located near the High Desert, the album’s opening, wildly trumpet driven track “Desert Chapel” is actually about a dream a friend of McLaughlin had about him that featured a chapel in the desert.

McLaughlin’s other inspirations range from the book About The Dusk (the plucky, fast paced “El Polvo”) to “The Solar Punks,” a multi-faceted expression of the anarchist movement that believes a sustainable future can be achieved without government. Now that McLaughlin is in a Brand New State, physically and musically, we can hope this is just the beginning of an auspicious career as a bandleader.