South Korea born pianist Ellie Lee’s auspicious, wildly inventive and adventurous debut album Escape comes courtesy of her finding peace in reconciling her early classical training with a later, all-encompassing desire to break the restraints and embrace the freedom of jazz.

The colorful journey/transition happened in the realm of her formal education, earning her Bachelor of Music in Classical Piano Performance from Sookmyung Women’s University, then securing a scholarship to Berklee School of Music, where she received a Professional Diploma and studied with various jazz masters and finally earning a Master of Music in Jazz Performance degree from William Paterson University in Wayne NJ.

The seven vibrantly performed and arranged originals and a lyrical, explosively improvisational twist on Benny Golson’s “Whisper Not” perfectly embody a quote that serves as her artistic mantra: Despite the fact that she had become frustrated by classical music’s rigidity, she has begun to feel “the co-existence between classical music and jazz music.”

1. Escape
2. Beyond The Blue
3. A Fine Day
4. Melrose Breeze
5. Whisper Not
6. On The Road
7. New Chapter

This vibrantly roused new recording opens on the vociferous Escape and then brings us the dutifully wistful Beyond The Blue, the contemplative A Fine Day, and then we get brought forth the romantically emboldened Melrose Breeze.

Along next is the veritably psychedelic Whisper Not and that is in turn backed by the impassioned On The Road, the album closing on the bustling rhythms found within New Chapter.

MUSICIANS: Piano - Ellie Lee, Saxophone - Steve Wilson, Bass - Steve Laspina, and Drum - Jongkuk Kim.

Official Spotify Purchase Link

www.ellieleemusic.com