Elsa Nilsson Releases New Album PULSES; Debuts Tonight At National Sawdust

New York-based flutist-composer Elsa Nilsson has released a new work. Her new album Pulses introduces her latest creative outfit Band of Pulses, and is inspired by the great Dr. Maya Angelou and particularly, her voice. Using a recording of Dr. Angelou's recitation of her poem "On The Pulse of Morning" as the guide, Nilsson and her band dance around Angelou's inflections and cadences, making for a stunning and creative musical suite. Band of Pulses includes pianist Santiago Leibson, bassist Marty Kenney and drummer Rodrigo Recabarren. This project was awarded a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grant.

Tonight, Elsa Nilsson and Band of Pulses will perform at National Sawdust to celebrate the album release. More information can be found here.

"I've always been drawn to Dr. Angelou's work," says Nilsson. "What I find compelling is her ability to look directly at difficult topics and approach them with both compassion and honesty. Her unflappable clarity in her expression of everything from the beautiful to the brutal is something I work to embody on my instrument as well. I return to her work often in order to guide myself back to center, and find a path forward in making art that feels genuine."

The seeds for Pulses were first planted about three years ago, when Recabarren shared a clip of Dr. Angelou's seminal recitation of "On The Pulse of Morning" at Bill Clinton's inauguration with Elsa, as they were both working on musical projects inspired by the spoken word. "Ron Miles told me once to imagine lyrics to every note I play. This is something I listen for in music," explains Nilsson. When listening to Dr. Angelou's speech, she was immediately struck by the similarities in her voice to John Coltrane's horn, and she surveyed the delicate balance between momentum and restraint in the poet's voice. "Flute has not been a go-to instrument in jazz, and I believe a lot of it is because this kind of momentum doesn't come naturally on the instrument due to its lack of resistance in the creation of the sound. It is much more of a vocal process, and so exploring how Dr. Angelou was creating that effect with her voice was exciting to me."

Nilsson fully immersed herself in this musical-spoken word intersection, and came up with some intriguing findings. For one, the inescapable similarities of Dr. Angelou's pitch and rhythms to the blues stuck out to Nilsson, drawing a connection between communication in speech and communication in jazz. Dr. Angelou uses diminished sounds to build intensity, and major sounds to release it, and when there is thematic development in the content, it is met with appropriate pitch and rhythm in speech. "The more time I spend with each inflection the deeper I hear the connection between her voice and the voices of musicians I love. At different points in her reading her phrasing will sound like John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins and Ornette Coleman. She increases her rhythmic density to build tension and releases it in the same fashion found in bebop phrasing," shares Nilsson. The deeper Nilsson dug into her inflections and phrasing, the more similarities with jazz she found, and this natural connection inspired the music that poured out of her. Granted permission from Angelou's estate, Caged Bird Legacy, Nilsson incorporates the entire 1993 recording, formally merging these two mediums to make something entirely new.

Band of Pulses brings together four imaginative creative forces of the New York jazz and improvised music scene. Recabarren, whose credits include Guillermo Klein, Melissa Aldana and Clauda Acuña, first worked with Nilsson extensively in 2020 as part of their collaborative trio South By North East with bassist Bam Bam Rodriguez. Not long after the release of their critically acclaimed debut album for human beings (coincidentally, also drawn from poetry, as the title is connected to a favorite poem of his), the trio became a duo due to Rodriguez's relocation. It was great luck then when Nilsson met Kenney (Allan Harris, Art Landy) and Leibson (Tony Malaby, Guillermo Klein, Francisco Mela), and felt an instant musical connection. "The way they played together felt like the exact right thing," she says.

Originally from Gothenburg, Sweden, Brooklyn-based Nilsson is a musical visionary with boundless creativity. A founding member of the Esthesis Quartet, and leader/co-leader of nearly a dozen albums, Nilsson's growing discography reflects an astute perspective, informed by deep research and immersion. Her adventurous 2022 ears&eyes release, Atlas Of Sound - Coast Redwoods - 41°32'09.8″N 124°04'35.5″W" brought listeners into Redwood National Park, and was praised by Bandcamp's Dave Sumner as being "as close as you'll get to being there without actually being there," adding that it was "yet another intriguing project from Nilsson that touches upon themes of experience, memory, and interconnectedness." Hindsight, her 2020 release inspired by the street protests after the 2016 election, did the same thing by incorporating the rhythmic cadence of protests and chants and turning them into compelling melodies and motifs. Pulses follows in the footsteps of these great contemporary works by marrying music and the spoken word in impeccable fashion.

Pulses is available on Bandcamp.