Theo Bleckmann - Love and Anger (2025)

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Theo Bleckmann - Love and Anger (2025)

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One voice has been recognized as an essential element in enhancing this generation’s endeavors in experimentation, originality, and tasteful interpretation. The exquisite vocal gifts of Theo Bleckmann have enlivened the works of many composers and improvisers over the years. This has unfortunately often led to his own projects becoming a rarity. Bleckmann’s new recording, Love and Anger, presents the full scope of the vocalist’s wide ranging musical talents with collaborators new and old on material imbued with heart.

One of Bleckmann’s more recent collaborators, Ulysses Owens, Jr., had loved Bleckmann’s Hello Earth, a recording highlighting the music of Kate Bush. Bleckmann and Owens’ time on the road allowed for a friendship to blossom, leading Owens to express his intention to produce a recording for Bleckmann in 2024.

The duo’s efforts were fluid and fast, as they chose material that they felt would highlight Bleckmann’s unique abilities and, also, was connected to his unique aesthetic. They really wanted to highlight Bleckmann’s innate ability to take another composer’s work and excavate something out of it that wasn’t already there. His pure and daring voice has inspired compositions by Ben Monder, John Hollenbeck, Phil Kline, Ikue Mori, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Julia Wolfe and David Lang, whose chamber opera “Note to a Friend” (commissioned by Japan Society and directed by Yoshi Oida) was composed specifically for Bleckmann’s unique sound and sensibility.

The musicians recruited to accompany Bleckmann on this deeply personal recording are fellow journeymen on many of Bleckmann’s projects, truly making this a band of friends. Drummer Owens is accompanied by stalwart bassist Matt Penman and pianist Mike King, a brilliant performer to whom Bleckmann was introduced during the Songs of Freedom tour. Longtime collaborators Ben Monder and woodwind specialist Timo Vollbrecht are also featured prominently on a number of pieces. These partnerships extend a lineage of trusted creative bonds—Bleckmann has maintained long-term associations with the late Sheila Jordan, Meredith Monk, and Monder, most recently appearing with Monk in her 2024 Park Avenue Armory blockbuster Indra’s Net.

The ensemble recording was made on July 24, 2024, at Trading 8s Studio by Chris Sulit and then mixed and mastered by Dave Darlington. It begins with two Kate Bush compositions. “Love and Anger” is a song about deep secrets, in this case those of the ills of the Catholic church. Bleckmann’s multilayered vocals float above the driving quartet as he asks for resolution from an ugly reality. Bush’s “Bertie” delivers a message of love for a child but also a concern for their existence in a confusing moment in time. The harmonic momentum of the piece is deepened with the addition of Vollbrecht’s arpeggiating sax and Monder’s hazy guitar. Frank Ocean’s “Solo” is stripped down to King’s organ and Bleckmann’s echoing multilayered choir.

Vollbrecht’s soprano sax and Bleckmann’s voice play counterpoint on a warmly swinging version of the Beatles’ “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.” Bleckmann honors his mentor and friend Sheila Jordan with an arrangement of the legendary vocalist’s “The Crossing,” the piece finding a sweet space between jazz tune, Celtic folk song, and spiritual. Bleckmann looks to Nina Simone’s version “Stars” to inspire his melancholy take on Janis Ian’s evergreen examination of wanting fame and the downsides of achieving it, messages that still resound in this social media age.

“I Feel Real” is a reflectively somber atmospheric introduction to disco legend Sylvester’s “Mighty Real.” Sylvester was one of the first non-binary artists, their music a soundtrack to a generation of the gay listeners that was tragically devastated by AIDS. The stripped-down quartet performance is movingly poignant. Another stop on Bleckmann’s musical journey was a study of Baroque composer Henry Purcell, whose “Dido’s Lament” is lushly reborn with Bleckmann’s overdubbed vocals and leads to Massive Attack’s hit “Teardrop,” which is cleverly reimagined for the quartet and features moving solo turns from Penman and King. The two are paired together as very different pieces of music mourning the loss of a loved one.

The recording concludes with a heartbreaking arrangement of the traditional hymn “Precious Lord” that Bleckmann made on the event of his sister-in-law’s funeral leading into a warmly upbeat setting of poet Labi Siffre’s “Cry, Laughing, Loving, Lying.” The piece capturing the full emotional scope of the project that hopes to shine light on love even through the tears.

Theo Bleckmann shows once again how his service to experimentation and interpretation remains utterly unique. Love and Anger provides an entrancingly kaleidoscopic view of Bleckmann’s impressive range of interests, styles, and collaborations—music that is accessibly sophisticated, unsentimentally emotional, and seriously playful.

Theo Bleckmann - vocals
Mike King - piano & organ
Matt Penman - bass
Ulysses Owens, Jr. - drums
Timo Vollbrecht - saxophone & flute (1, 4, 5, 12)
Ben Monder - guitar (1, 5, 12)