By just about every measure, Sean Mason was living the New York dream as a pianist, composer and musical director in constant demand across a stylistically diverse array of high-profile jazz settings. But inside he was feeling increasingly adrift, struggling to express his deepest sense of himself in his music. With his second album as a leader, A Breath of Fresh Air, Mason reveals his boundless vision, a breathtaking panorama that encompasses more than a century of musical innovation. Featuring the same cast of players from his acclaimed 2023 debut release The Southern Suite, it’s an elegantly virtuosic quintet session that traces the deeply satisfying emotional arc of a soul inspired and renewed.
More than an album, A Breath of Fresh Air is a multimedia experience that includes a short film featuring interviews with each band member talking about the band’s creative process and a video series documenting the music being recorded. An accompanying photo essay and the pianist’s cogent text offer another look at a project that Mason designed to inspire other people to pursue their deepest creative passions, unfettered by outside expectations.
As the candid videos from the session make clear, the combo recorded old-school, with no sheet music, steady eye contact and no booths or barriers between them. Looking to capture the frisson of a live concert, he harkened back to “the way all of my favorite records were made, with the cats in the same room,” he says. “I teach the tunes by ear, sending voice messages singing the melody and playing the changes so the guys can internalize the tunes. I write the sheet music after the session.”
The conversational aesthetic reflects Mason’s new-found confidence that he’s on the right path as an artist and a human being after years of growing unease. While he was increasingly busy in New York, the assignments pulled him in different directions and there was less and less space to explore the entire scope of his artistic identity, “the fullness of who I am as an artist,” he says.
On one hand, Mason was “playing with a lot of trad cats who were heavy in the Lindy Hop and swing dance scene,” he says. He was also touring and recording with Catherine Russell, a collaboration that culminated in their Grammy-nominated 2024 duo project My Ideal, “which represented another part of me, focusing on that bawdy pre-War blues tradition. But another side of me is deep into a lot of contemporary culture, not just music, but fashion, design, dance, etc. Too often jazz isn’t engaged with all of that. I was kind of having an identity crisis in New York, until I had a spiritual revelation that I needed to focus on being myself.”
Refusing to constrain himself in predefined boxes, Mason has expanded exponentially with an approach that seamlessly internalizes a sweeping set of cultural influences from jazz and far beyond. The journey starts with the joyful “Rediscovery,” an intricate form with considerable harmonic motion. The main theme came to Mason on a walk, and its jaunty bounce evokes a high-stepping stroll on the sunny side of boulevard with some fascinating detours on the way.
“As the melody kept repeating in my head I heard this 2000s era hip-hop progression with a cowbell go-go beat,” he says. “We wink at several facets of the jazz continuum, flirt with a stop-time passage, and end up bursting into full-throttle mid-tempo swing, like we’ve got nothing to lose.”
The point isn’t the broad set of references and influences. It’s that Mason and his comrades have forged a singular sonic synthesis. This highly flexible and contingent approach provides Mason with infinite possibilities to improvise and compose, transmuting inspiration into singular personal expression. As Branford Marsalis notes, “the album sounds like Ahmad Jamal and Horace Silver had a baby.”
A loving tribute to the slinky post-bop sound associated with the mid-century scene, “Secrets” features some tough-but-tender horn work by Glausi, a player due for a burst of recognition for his burnished lyricism. “Duende” dances on a mambo groove, with an extended melodic line propelled by Branch’s deft application of stick and brush. And “Boneback” opens as a classic boogie woogie number that ends up on the street in New Orleans. It’s a brief, ecstatic blast of pleasure, “composed and produced like a vintage 78 record with a time constraint,” Mason says.
In a canny bit of programming he follows up with the lustrous ballad “Open Your Heart,” a thematic melody evoking the muscular vulnerability of the mid-1940s radio orchestras that provided a soundtrack for young couples thrown together and torn apart by the war. Branch’s sensitive brush work sweeps the tune into a 6/8 R&B back beat for a set of solos followed by
Mason’s torrid passage of double-time feel (punctuated with a canny “Blue Monk” quote).
The groove picks up with “Unfinished Business,” a piece that seems to pick up where “Boneback” leaves off. Driven by Lewis’s and Glausi’s forceful unison work, the piece bounces deep in the pocket with a four-on-the-floor groove that could power ecstatic testimony or a work song. “Capital J” is a sleek, torrential burner that the band swings with authority. What’s fascinating is that Mason sets all the players down different lines, bringing trad New Orleans polyphony to what’s essentially a bebop riff. The group learned the tune the day before the session, “and Chris and Tony are blowing their asses off,” Mason says. “It really shows the diversity of the band, it feels like a jam session tune.”
He closes the session with the lush “Kiss Me,” a piece that calls out for a love-besotted lyric. It’s a lively soul ballad that floats on Branch’s bone-dry brushes while Moseholm supplies a pulse that feels like a siren-call from the dance floor. The group captures the intoxicating intimacy of bodies touching in motion, a visceral spark that Mason associates with Ray Charles, “a sound I grew up with around the house,” he says.
In many ways the album is an exercise in world building. Determined to reclaim his identity as an artist while delving into fundamental questions about what he loves most, A Breath of Fresh Air provides a resounding answer. It’s the work of an artist who’s found himself, spiritually, creatively, and emotionally. Guided by his wide-open ears and the creative synergy generated by the diverse voices of his quintet, Mason has bounded past the roles and expectations that held him back.
“For me, it’s a testimony,” he says. “Artistically, our inspiration comes from all over, but the magic comes from transmuting those influences into a cohesive artistic language, making it our own. This is the path I need to walk.”
He hopes A Breath of Fresh Air inspires listeners on their own journey.
