Crossing The Digital Faultline

Given the dire state of the US both at home and abroad, it's a wonder that jazz musicians across the globe, in their own tongue, their own aesthetic and their own devices, still try to carry the music of American tradition forward while calling it their own. It only proves how marvelous and resilient this music continues to be and how wonderful it is to give witness.

In her own characteristic musical idiom, each of the four composers included in this recording has risen to the challenge of breaking through the limits of her time period, while not completely disavowing it. Indeed, authentic novelty in music does not always involve going beyond the confines of one’s epoch: it also means being at a crossing point, standing on the line that separates the old from the new, classical from contemporary, holding firm between two shores, in order to bring a shared resonance to what was, what is, and what will be.

Sulari Gentill, author of the 1930s Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, jumps to the post-modern in Crossing the Lines.
A successful writer, Madeleine, creates a character, Edward, and begins to imagine his life. He, too, is an author. Edward is in love with a woman, Willow, who’s married to a man Edward loathes, and who loathes him, but he and Willow stay close friends. She’s an artist. As Madeleine develops the plot, Edward attends a gallery show where a scummy critic is flung down a flight of fire stairs…murdered…