Chip Wickham - Blue to Red - been waiting for this one, and it’s worth the wait. He sticks mostly to flute on this new album of spiritual jazz (and one fusion jam).
Flautist and saxophonist, Chip Wickham returns with Blue to Red, his most absorbing and cosmically-charged offering to date. Soaring flute melodies, lush harp arpeggios and glistening Rhodes keys interact across six journeying, spiritual jazz compositions, leaning on a rich palette of sounds beyond borders, space and time. Channeling the spirit of Alice Coltrane and Yusef Lateef via the lens of a hip-hop, electronic and club music educated ear, Blue to Red encompasses Wickham’s disparate set of production influences with his Manchester and spiritual jazz education. The album, not only seeks to forewarn Earth’s possible Mars-like future but seeks to tap into the interplanetary, cosmic nature of music.
Liner notes When life started 4 billion years ago, Mars was also a blue planet. It lost its atmosphere and ever since then, there has been red and dead. It’s our own senselessness that we’re pushing our planet in the same direction. It’s a culture crisis rather than a climate crisis, one that can only be solved if we go right to the core of how we live as human beings. Jazz has always had a big spiritual connection with life and our place in the cosmos, searching for answers and finding meaning above us, but now we need to stop looking up and look around before its too late and blue becomes red. Chip creditsreleased May 8, 2020 Chip Wickham, Flute and Sax Jon Scott, Drums Simon ‘Sneaky’ Houghton, Double Bass and Cello Dan ‘JD 73’ Goldman, Keys Amanda Whiting, Harp Rick Weedon, Percussion All songs written and arranged by Chip Wickham
