Drawing inspiration from his love of martial arts legend
Bruce Lee, pianist
Christian Sands offers his flowing, harmonically textured sixth album, 2020's
Be Water. The album follows the similarly nuanced 2018 effort
Facing Dragons and finds
Sands continuing to develop his sophisticated brand of contemporary post-bop jazz. The album's title is a reference to a portion of
Lee's dialogue from his 1971 breakthrough appearance on the TV drama Longstreet and which he paraphrased that same year in an interview with Canadian journalist
Pierre Berton while discussing his career and philosophy.
Lee said, "Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now, you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."
Sands, who inserts audio of the quote before Parts One and Two of the album's title track, takes this transformative, dualistic idea and applies it throughout the album, with songs that balance compositional lyricism, empathetic group interplay, and searching improvisation. Helping him achieve this balance are his longtime associates, bassist
Yasushi Nakamura, guitarist
Marvin Sewell, and drummer
Clarence Penn. Together, they craft impressionistic tracks like "Sonar," "Crash," and "Stream," building upon
Sands' inventive grooves and repeated harmonic devices. Also joining in are saxophonist
Marcus Strickland, trumpeter
Sean Jones, and trombonist
Steve Davis, who appear on the lushly arranged "Be Water I," and each take deeply soulful solo turns. Conversely, on "Be Water II,"
Sands takes a classical chamber approach, framing his sparkling piano lines in woody cello and violin accents. Yet more evocative is "Still," a languid, ASMR-inducing ballad that juxtaposes the captured sounds of a row boat with
Sands' dusky piano chords and
Sewell's airy acoustic guitar harmonics. Indeed,
Be Water's relaxed intensity alone might call
Bruce Lee to mind, mirroring his storied intellect and controlled physicality.