In making music that ventures out from its center and back again, Vandever explores how healing can be like a maturing tree. The roots remain—it’s the branches that move in new directions.
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Regrowth
The trombonist Kalia Vandever lands on New Amsterdam for an album of patient discovery.
Soft is the composition that opens the new album, with a melody whose offbeat syncopation… combines poplike concision with a whisper of classical minimalism.
Regrowth is a confident stride forwards… released as spring is in full swing, Regrowth is a tribute to creation and persistence: both in nature and artistically.
Regrowth as a whole is unsuspecting – it is as much a mystery as it is a synchronized stream of consciousness, emotion, and perspective. It is what emerges when stagnation feels imminent and creativity is daunting.
Regrowth’s pieces tend to be recursive and insistent, worrying over small cycles of material in ways that suggest equally the minimalism of Steve Reich and the transcendent meditations of Pharoah Sanders.
An impressive sophomore LP, Regrowth displays creative development on all fronts. As good as it is, it also presages more evolution to come, indicating a masterpiece sits in Vandever’s near future.
Kalia Vandever sculpts her trombone’s golden tones into dazzling compositions. Starting with the gentle liftoff of opener “Soft,” the record unfurls like petals in early spring.