Above and Below, by Beth Schenck

Above and Below

by Beth Schenck

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
The Vinyl is here! This is a limited run. Vinyl mastering by Nathan James at Vault Mastering. Album design by Denise Burk.

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1.	Above and Below 02:47	buy track
2.	buoys rang like (church bells) 07:36	buy track
3.	12/20/20 02:00	buy track
4.	Strange Life of Io 02:29	buy track
5.	What Beauty 04:16	buy track
6.	Let the Coins Decide 05:29	buy track
7.	Sea Glass 01:25	buy track
8.	Last Light on the Horizon 01:22	buy track
9.	Missing Persons 03:14	buy track
10.	Blood Memory 02:21	buy track
11.	Expanding Joy 03:51	buy track

about

Above and below, all at once.

If there’s a way we can touch anything like eternity on this plane, I think it must have something to do with music. But not the kind of music that impatiently delineates its own existence with names, tunes, styles, approaches. There is another kind of music that arises from something deeper than all of that. It opens a little space in time and welcomes us to come inside for a while, listen, and find a refuge from all of the trying.

It inhales and exhales, and we breathe with it. It holds on to that movement with purpose and equanimity, and we move along with it. It’s honest, and it offers a peculiar kind of trust that allows us to let go of what we thought would happen, stop worrying about what we wish might happen, and learn to embrace what actually is happening.

The music on this album was created during the pandemic winter of 2020-21. We were all wrestling with what was happening – the global horror of raging disease unfolding in network time and the slow, subtle solitude of isolation at home. Fear for the future and gratitude for some extra time to contemplate family and things that matter. Exhausted from so many months of uncertainty, tired of hoping.

Despite the weariness, or probably because of it, my friend Beth Schenck managed to steal a few quiet hours every weekend, alone in a bedroom with her saxophones and microphones to play through the thoughts and emotions she was carrying. Old memories of hymns and her father’s sermons, the spiritual immediacy of nature as ocean buoys become church bells, childhood and motherhood, past and present, heaven and hell.

The result is this timeless music that comes from one incredibly sincere musician’s struggle to make sense of a moment when the world was “scary and beautiful and horrible and glorious all at once” – those are her words.

As we listen, we are all of those things too.

Kris Tiner 1.27.22

credits

released April 22, 2022

Beth Schenck, alto saxophone and compositions

Mixed by John Clement Wood
Mastered by Nathan James at Vault Mastering
Photos by Dyanne Cano
Graphic Design by Denise Burt

Innova
Director of Recordings: Chris Campbell
Manager of Recordings: Tim Igel

Recorded at home between November 2020-February 2021

Elizabeth Schenck (ASCAP) 2022

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Beth Schenck San Francisco, California

bethschenck.com

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