10/10
Amanda Whiting, harp.
First Word, 2024.
The title of Welsh harpist Amanda Whiting’s latest album comes from an anthropological term coined over 100 years ago. Liminality, from the Latin for threshold, is the quality of ambiguity that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage.Â
Hypnotic in its laid back beat, funky groove, and tight ensemble, Whiting captures this middle stage in an alchemy of jazz, fusion, and spiritual through 10 original tracks. Perhaps it’s best exemplified in the simplicity of the first of these, Finding the Way, where a bowed bass played by the versatile Aidan Thorne is backed by gentle waves of arpeggios.
What is this, we ask, before Whiting establishes a new direction, starting with a short flourish cadenza that leads into Facing the Sun. Whiting’s background is in the classical world, and that’s clear through her liquid tone and supple technique. But her jazz chops are on full display in the ease with which she improvises, at once sounding searching and fully in the moment, while also seeming to call to us to follow her to a new moment. Traps, soulfully played by Jon Reynolds, plus small interjections of percussion by Mark O’Connor lay down a smooth rhythm of a very slow dance.
An absolute favorite of mine is Intertwined, referring to the meeting of these superb collaborative musicians in tasty bass, driving drums, and the luscious and lazily reverberant vocals by PEACH. When Whiting’s harp improv begins to emanate from the texture in frothy waves, it’s tight, responsive, mesmerizing, and heavenly.
The title track lays down a funky and complex duo of percussionists as Whiting shimmies above. Their places are switched in a flamenco-tinged Nomad, where Whiting takes the lead crying out in the highest register before singing us a gently shape-shifting song. This leads to another unique exploration in Alchemy, where again Thorne plays an acoustic bass arco, this time in the high register where the instrument sounds the most fragile, as if a song of a whale beneath the dark blue sea of Whiting’s rippling chords.
This nature theme continues when flutist Chip Wickham joins in for Waiting to Go, his honey-colored tone like a native flute, reedy and earthy. It’s right back to high energy in No Turning Back beginning with O’Connor’s out-of-this-world hand drumming. Whiting plays with elegance, keeping up the vigor without a hint of tension.
PEACH rejoins for the sexy Rite of Passage all sighs. But there is no way we’re left there when one final statement is needed. Feels So Far Away, with a walking bass and Whiting’s floaty legato, practically begs for a replay.
