For those unaware, little did highly celebrated jazz vocalist Rondi Charleston realize that her album Resilience, released in 2017, would foretell a profound new chapter of a life-changing narrative. Resilience was a meaningful collection of melody-rich original songs where Charleston wrote about elemental struggles, capturing the modern angst of the culture and recovering from the throes of socio/political dysfunction.

Three years later, in 2020, Charleston—like so many creative artists, found herself looking inward, trying to “stay sane” during the pandemic by writing in her journal as a mode of survival. Those journal entries evolved into sketches of poems, and then eventually into songs, rendering the poignant and beautiful Suspended in Time: A Song Cycle, a unique and rich collaboration with her close friend master jazz pianist/composer Fred Hersch, who performs on the album and serves as its producer.

The seven-song collaboration between the two artists is scheduled to be released February 7, as her seventh album. It will be issued on her mission-driven GRAMMY-winning record label Resilience Music Alliance (RMA), an independent imprint founded in 2017 by Charleston and her husband Steve Ruchefsky, to empower artists who celebrate the human condition of resilience.

1. Suspended In Time
2. Sea of Eyes
3. Lullaby
4. Fever Dreams
5. Awakenings
6. Patience
7. Here We Are

This magnificently impassioned new recording, whose musical cycle opens in mid-winter spring of 2020, culminating in spring of 2023, opens on the simply decadent Suspended In Time and then we are lovingly brought forth an aching yearn that threads throughout the dulcet Sea of Eyes, the immaculately sculpted Lullaby, the veritable spoken-word poetry of Fever Dreams, the gentle finger snapper Awakenings, the set rounding out on the emboldened Patience, coming to a close on the heartfelt Here We Are.

In the album notes, Hersch writes: “When Rondi started sending me her lyrics, it gave me a sense of purpose. It was a way to make use of a terrible time to do something inspiring and, I hoped, a way to channel what I was feeling into some material that would reflect what we were all going through. I am grateful that she entrusted me with her words, and now we are happy to share them with the world.”

www.rondicharleston.com

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