Ross McHenry- Waves
BASSIST-COMPOSER ROSS MCHENRY’S WAVES IS A JOURNEY THROUGH MEMORY AND LANDSCAPE
Featuring: Ross McHenry Bass, Eric Harland Drums, Donny McCaslin Tenor Saxophone, Adam O'Farrill Trumpet, Ben Monder Guitar, Matthew Sheens Piano
Out 13 September on Earshift Music
““Meditative and oceanic (…) breathtakingly beautiful and turbulent.””
'Waves' is an ambitious project from bassist-composer Ross McHenry, an exploration of memory, history, and the impact of seismic personal and existential events. Crafted in the wake of Australia's devastating 2019 summer fires, Waves stands as a poignant love letter to the landscapes and relationships that shape our stories. Recorded at the Bunker Studios in New York, the album features an impressive roster of musicians, including Eric Harland, Ben Monder, Donny McCaslin, Adam O’Farrill, and Matthew Sheens, lifting McHenry's celebrated compositional voice to unprecedented heights.
'Waves' embarks from the depths of the ocean to the nostalgia of childhood gardens, encapsulating Ross McHenry’s reflections on the ephemeral nature of memory and history. "This work is about how we loosely grasp our own memory and fathom the uncontrollable chain reactions of seismic personal and existential events," McHenry explains. The album is not just a musical exploration but a journey through the emotional landscapes that define us. It reflects a profound connection to place and the stories that emerge from our interactions with the world around us. "Written against the backdrop of a burning Australia, 'Waves' is a testament to the resilience of landscape and the human spirit," McHenry shares.
Ross McHenry's global reputation is built on a foundation of fearless experimentalism and significant international collaborations. His work has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the 2019 APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Excellence in Jazz and the 2020 Arts South Australia Ruby Award for Best Work Outside a Festival.
'Waves' not only continues this tradition but also represents a significant evolution in McHenry's artistic journey, reinforcing his status as a pivotal figure in new Australian music. "Each album is a reflection of an ever-evolving artistic conversation, driven by a commitment to the vulnerability and imperfect nature of the creative process," McHenry notes, highlighting his dedication to redefining the boundaries of his musical expression through ongoing collaborations and explorations.
Ross McHenry is a multi-award-winning bassist and composer whose career has been characterized by boundary-pushing explorations in contemporary improvised music, chamber music, and beyond. With five solo albums to his name, McHenry is an Australian Music Centre Associate Artist and holds a PhD in jazz composition. Beyond his musical achievements, he is a passionate advocate for the arts, serving as the current Executive Director of Windmill Theatre Company and contributing to the Australian arts sector through leadership, production, research, and advocacy.
'Waves' stands as the latest milestone in McHenry's distinguished career, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in a rich musical experience that spans the personal and universal.
““Brilliance in abundance (…) unremitting power and virtuosity (…) McHenry is creating his own oevre””
Credit: James Hartley
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From Ross…
Waves is a sketch of a moment in time. It is about experiences from the past and the way they meet experiences in the present. The way things become intertwined and related, and the way experience is at once about what is at hand and simultaneously about all that has already been.
Waves
I lay in the water staring at the horizon. It is completely flat, shimmering. In the car park the bitumen is melting. The metal clasps of the seatbelts are so hot they burn the skin. The flames moved so quickly no one could believe it. In the water I think of nothing, I forget.
Love and Obscurity
I am at the playground in the square, soon it will be too hot and we will leave, everybody is already tired. I am waiting for the man with the pitbull he can’t control to stop walking in circles around the park. I drive to the creek spot I love. It’s a long drive, everyone is complaining. Nobody knows why we always have to keep coming here for me to remember. As day breaks I am on the Ikea couch. Our first proper piece of furniture. You said enough and so we bought it. It is stained now but not too bad. Another heart beating on my chest. I just sit there looking at the colour in the sky. People ask me how my music is going, they don’t understand it’s always going and never stopping. Why do you always have to practice dad? Can we play now? I google myself to see if anything has changed, it hasn’t. Nobody knows my name.
In Landscape
You never forget. The sweet smell of stringy barks and wet earth on the wind. Cut grass. Damp pine needles. Back seat. Vinyl. Salt water, before you see the sea. Dog at my feet. Your childhood home, gone forever. They cut down the pin oak, and the willow gone already with the gums. You regret it. I heard the big tree on the hill died too, in the ice cream shop the other day.
July 1986
I am a father. I write surrounded by, interrupted by – pulled back to reality by my children. My wife, at the time of writing this music, is 7 months pregnant with my third child. Place, memory and family somehow become a deep source of inspiration for my writing. I look over old photographs in an album I borrow from my mother. I don’t know why. One in particular sticks in my mind, it is the house I grew up in. Before the pin oak, the willow and the gums have grown. Before it was renovated, it was always being renovated. I am sitting in a cane washing basket with my identical twin brother Angus. We are smiling. Angus died aged 9 months in July 1986. Having my own children now I think of this often. The quiet pain of my parents, who carried this grief and maybe still do. I am not sure I could carry on as strong as they did. When my third child is born, we call him Angus.
Odysseus in Brooklyn
Somehow, we are always returning. Home is an idea. Maybe the most important idea we will ever have. I am across the other side of the world, far from home. My children ask me, why do you need to go? Why don’t you stay? There is no reason I can give.
North of the River
We race leaves on the tiny stream. It comes out of the hill. How does so much water come out of the hill even when it isn’t raining? The leaves smell of sweet rot. The water is so cold our hands are numb. The sleeves of our knitted jumpers are wet. We are laughing in our rubber boots, wet inside. Track pants from a cousin that are too big. What does the bird man think as we run past? He checks his cages. We never knew his name. Down the valley there is a lake that was made by men. It is fed by the stream.
1989
When I was a kid, as you turned to walk down my street, a little tunnel of trees and creeper vines appeared to your right. We called it the secret way. No more than ten metres long, it felt magical. Like stepping into a story book, the way the light fell. I remember taking the secret way with my younger brother Max who was born in 1989, just under three years after the death of my twin brother Angus. Though I have never spoken to my parents about this, as a parent today I imagine this must have been an important part of moving on despite not knowing how one would even do that, given the context. There is sorrow here but also joy. For me the memory of my brother and my family is encapsulated in this fading impression of place, and many others like it – is the memory real, or is it fabricated to some degree? The box of precious things. Kept up high, I saw it once or twice. Do they still have the box? How much of the memory is coloured by the reality of my own present experience and how much of it really is real, if any. The secret way isn’t there anymore.