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Jihye Lee Orchestra: Daring Mind

By Mike Jurkovic
March 10, 2021
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Listening to bandleader/composer

Jihye Lee

composer / conductor

" data-original-title="" title="">Jihye Lee and her mic-drop orchestra is like watching your life flash before your eyes. You see it all: All the richness of spirit one can attain. All the sadness one can espouse. All the waltzing mischief to which one can aspire.

Testing malleability at every turn, Lee's on to an eclectic something that doesn't pass through the torpor too often: A lucid, active imagination. Thus Daring Mind, Lee's Motema Music debut, co-produced by

Darcy James Argue

composer / conductor
b.1975

" data-original-title="" title="">Darcy James Argue serves not only as a triumphant successor to 2017's heralded, self-produced April, it plays as a buoyant drama, a roaming investigation that swells and swales in all the right places, ie: "Relentless Mind." The BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize-winning original, "Unshakeable Mind" is percussive, romantic, and born of Brooklyn. "I Dare You It" dips, dives and squawks. Lee's second award winner, "Revived Mind" is an Asian lullaby child's dance with a Disney tilt. Trumpeter

Sean Jones

trumpet
b.1978

" data-original-title="" title="">Sean Jones marks his territory with a lean, summoning tone, most notably on the defining "Struggle Gives You Strength," a

Duke Ellington

piano
1899 - 1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Duke Ellington scion if ever ever there was one.

The bluesy "Why Is That" sets up the cliff-jumping "Dissatisfied Mind" which, once you dust yourself up from the landing, steers you into a Manhattan rush hour just as the grid goes down and all the lights go out. If it sounds like a panic it is, but Lee's insistence on a steadfast harmonic core holds steady. And you hold course steadily too, into the lysergic, vista-vision swirls of Daring Mind's closing valediction, "GB."

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Track Listing

Relentless Mind; Unshakeable Mind; Suji; I Dare You; Revived Mind; Struggle Gives You Strength; Why Is That; Dissatisfied Mind; GB.

Personnel

Jihye Lee

composer / conductor

Sean Jones

trumpet

Alan Ferber

trombone

Ben Kono

saxophone, tenor

Adam Birnbaum

piano

Quensin Nachoff

saxophone, tenor

Mike Fahie

trombone

Rob Wilkerson

saxophone, alto

Brian Pareschi

trumpet

John Lake

trumpet

Alex Norris

trumpet

Nick Grinder

trombone

Jennifer Wharton

trombone, bass

Sebastian Noelle

guitar

Evan Gregor

bass, acoustic

Mark Ferber

drums

Additional Instrumentation

Jeremy Powell: reeds; Carl Maraghi: reeds; Mark Patterson: trombone # 2,5; Haeun Joo: piano (2, 5, 8).

Album information

Title: Daring Mind | Year Released: 2021 | Record Label: Mot��ma Music

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