Harpist Ashley Jackson’s label debut album Take Me to the Water is out on March 21 with Decca Records, US. The album will be available on all digital service providers after release.
According to a press release, Take Me to the Water is a musical exploration of the physical and metaphorical significance of water, “drawing from African mythology and the antebellum spiritual tradition while recognizing the 2.2 billion people who are still denied safe access to clean water today.” The album touches on a variety of genres to express this broad spectrum of ideas, from Alice Coltrane’s “Radhe-Shyam” and Claude Debussy’s “Danse Sacrée” to new transcriptions of baptism spirituals interpreted for piano by Black composers Margaret Bonds and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. We caught up with Jackson to learn more.
You said this album is a very personal project. Tell us more about the stories and themes you want to share through the music, and your personal connection to them.
One of my earliest musical experiences was going to church with my grandmother. It was one of those Baptist churches where music was a part of every aspect of the service, including baptism. This album began with that memory, of the spirituals that were sung during those most joyous moments.
Some of the tracks on your album draw from older compositions or spirituals. Can you tell us about your creative process for transcribing and reimagining these melodies on the harp?
The harp is one of the oldest instruments in the world, and in many cultures, continues to be associated with storytelling. I love transcribing and arranging because the possibilities are endless. When taking pre-existing melodies, I always start with the words, and internalize what the words mean and how they make me feel. From there, I improvise with different textures and settle on the ones that most support the emotional journey that I want listeners to go on.
What have you learned as an artist and performer from creating this album?
Trust. I’ve learned to trust my own musical instincts in experimenting with blending different genres of music and translating that love of the eclectic on my own instrument.
What do you hope listeners will take away from the album?
As with all of my work, Take Me to the Water comes from a deeply personal place, so I hope that listeners feel the connections between cultural heritage, spiritual reflection, and universal themes of renewal and freedom. Water is celebrated in lots of different cultures, but, despite that, you find recurring themes in those celebrations: love, hope, and rebirth.
What projects are you working on next?
New arrangements and ideas for the next album! We finished recording in June, so for the rest of the summer, I spent a good deal of time working through concepts for my next project. I haven’t settled on anything just yet, but I’m working through some concrete ideas :).
Check out Harp Column’s CD review of Jackson’s first album, Ennanga, which earned a perfect ten in the January-February 2024 issue.
