Alive With Ghosts Today

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Alive With Ghosts Today is a suite-length album by saxophonist and composer Chris Potter, released on May 8, 2026 via Edition Records, and inspired by the story of John Brown — the white American abolitionist who led a small, mixed-race group in the 1859 raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to arm enslaved people and ignite a liberation uprising. The raid failed, most of the participants were killed, and Brown was tried for treason and hanged — but the act became one of the immediate catalysts for the Civil War. The album's title is drawn from a Langston Hughes poem about Brown, whose grandmother had been engaged to one of the men killed in the raid, and Potter has spoken of the project as an engagement with histories that are not distant but "active — these ghosts are still with us." Recorded at Sear Sound in New York over three days in March 2025, the eight-track, 49-minute album was produced by Potter himself.The ensemble Potter assembled is deliberately unconventional — what he describes as "almost like a slightly unruly village band" rather than a polished jazz group. It features guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Burniss Travis, drummer Nate Smith, clarinetist Rane Moore, trombonist Zekkereya El-Magharbel, and violinist Sara Caswell, alongside Potter's own tenor and soprano saxophones. The instrumentation creates a distinctly American sonic palette rooted in blues, gospel, folk, Copland-esque open harmonies, and African rhythmic elements, with the suite unfolding across tracks titled "Osawatomie Brown," "The Heavens in Scarlet," "Sister Annie," "This Earth Would Have No Charms for Me," "Into Africa," and "Mine Eyes," bookended by two movements of the title piece. The music builds tension through layered ensemble textures and integrated improvisation rather than virtuosic display, allowing the historical narrative to breathe across its arc. Show more