Rich Pellegrin: Topography (featuring Neil Welch)

Whidbey Island, nestled in the nook of Puget Sound, must be an inspiring place. Pianist Rich Pellegrin finds it so. He has recorded two solo works here, Solitude (OA2 Records, 2021), (review here) and Passage (OA2 Records, 2022), (review here). Both of these works—recorded in the same session—have a feeling of serenity, of an escape from the mind-numbing necessities of modern life; they elicit a cool, pastoral frame of mind, inspired by the isolation, climate, topography, and the verdant flora of the land not far from the Olympic Peninsula, not too far south, longitudinally speaking, from the fjords of Norway.

Pellegrin follows his two solo discs—recorded at the island's Langley United Methodist Church on a 1915 vintage Everett Concert Grand piano—in the same place. Topography, though, is a duo affair with saxophonist Neil Welch joining in. The "studio"—in this case, the church—and the piano play a big part in the calm and cerebral aspect of the sound. A subtle resonance that glows within the music's spaciousness imbues the soundscapes with a spirituality born of the natural world, the edifice and the instrument sounding as if they are possessed of spirits, those that are intent on being forces of good in this world. And Welch's saxophone sounds as if it has a hundred-year history, too.

As the title Topography tells us, the untamed landscape of Whidbey Island inspired these improvisations, resulting in tune titles like "Treeline," "Ravine," "Butte," "Canyon (Day)," "Canyon (Night), "Cave" and "Marsh." A hushed, whisper-in-church feeling prevails. It sounds like a hallowed suite for Whidbey Island. With its timeless cohesive mood, we can add the previously mentioned Solitude and Passage and make it a triptych. While those solo discs were purely and completely improvised from nothing, for Topography Pellegrin wrote sketches for the majority of the pieces, some very loose, but all coming from the composer's strong vision for exploring the themes that he wanted to express.

The songs may evoke cool mists hovering just above the treetops in the twilight, or the swaying of tall grasses on the blufftop, or the whispers of the reeds in the marsh, all of this beautifully expressed by pianist Rich Pellegrin and saxophonist Neil Welch with understated grace.