Kate Amrine: This is My Letter to the World
Innova

Its title derived from Emily Dickinson's 1862 poem, Kate Amrine's This is My Letter to the World is a deeply engaged communiqué dealing with pressing social and political issues. Among the topics addressed on the NYC-based trumpeter's self-produced sophomore effort are gun violence, abortion rights, discrimination, climate change, feminism, identity, and immigration. Whereas Amrine's debut As I Am addressed empowerment head-on by featuring music by women composers, her new one expands on it with topics of equally resonant character and material by female and non-female composers.

In addition to three by Amrine herself, the release features works by Gemma Peacocke, Jacob TV, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Ruby Fulton, Kevin Joest, inti figgis-vizueta, Jay Rizzetto, and Howie Kenty. Amrine's horn is front and center, of course, but a modest number of guests also contributes to the eleven settings, their woodwinds, strings, and voices enhancing the presentation whenever they appear. While This is My Letter to the World wasn't conceived necessarily as a showcase for Amrine's trumpet technique, by their very nature the pieces call on her to explore the instrument's range of textural possibilities.

The electroacoustic Skin, written by Peacocke “as a rumination on the way in which our skin pushes up against truth, engendering both real identities and constructions of the self,” succinctly captures Amrine's sensibility as an artist in its bold embedding of trumpet within a mutating electronic context. Joest's Thoughts and Prayers adopts a more overt political stance, with anger and frustration at the lack of movement in addressing gun-related carnage the impetus for the piece. A collage of overlapping voices, Obama's (“My immediate thoughts and prayers are with the wounded and with the families of the fallen …”) among them, blend while Amrine's muted trumpet draws from “Taps,” the piece performed to memorialize the dead. The effectiveness of Joest's design is made apparent when the babble of voices speaks to the ineffectiveness of talk in place of action. Integrated into the work's structure are astute observations such as “Let's face it: if Congress won't act after twenty first-graders were executed in their classroom, they certainly won't start with you.” Thoughts and prayers clearly aren't enough.

What We are Doing to Ourselves derives some of its impact from the fact that text for the piece came from the suicide note left in 2018 by LGBT rights lawyer David S Buckel. Amrine's piece deals with the profound damage done to the environment by humans, with spoken and sung text accompanied by alto flute (Roberta Michel), trumpet, viola (Carrie Frey), and cello (Amanda Gookin) and a field recording of Washington's 2018 Maple Fire woven into the work's design. In another of the album's memorable multi-instrument pieces, the trumpeter's joined on her Waiting? by alto flutist Leanne Friedman, their expressions interspersed with spoken word phrases about the anxieties that come from having to wait for opportunities to arrive while wanting them to come sooner than later.

In Nourbakhsh's My Body My Choice, Amrine solos against a backdrop that grows increasingly aggressive when a female voice emphatically shouts the title over and over. Women's voices are also key to the trumpeter's We Are Women when intonations of the title alternate with a trumpet trio of Amrine, Alia Kuhnert, and Maddi Lusby. The inspiration for Fulton's I'm Sorry Not Sorry came from Hillary Clinton's use of the words “I'm sorry” to her supporters after losing the 2016 election and the composer's observation that women feel compelled to apologize more than men. In that spirit, the piece begins by panning “I'm sorry” by female voices until “Not sorry” punctuates their utterances, Amrine's horn (accompanied by Kate Barmotina's viola) used to bolster the rejoinder by appearing in conjunction with it.

This is My Letter to the World impresses on many counts, but it isn't without imperfections. While it does bring levity to a recording focused on serious issues, JacobTV's Close Fight (based on interviews with two boxers after a 2013 bout at Brooklyn's Barclays Center) seems frivolous in this context. As a player, Amrine acquits herself well, her rapid runs suggesting she could perform effectively in an R&B horn section if she wanted to, but the piece feels like it belongs on a different recording than this one.

The album's longest piece, a fourteen-minute treatment of Kenty's It Wasn't Something that We Could Control, features strong instrumental performances by Amrine and bass clarinetist Ford Fourqurean and text content dealing with myriad challenges facing illegal immigrants under the current administration. The delivery of the spoken word content is fine; the singing is less effective, however, and is more at the level of guide vocals designed to provide direction to singers appearing on the formal release. Having recently reviewed A Howl, That Was Also A Prayer by the vocal ensemble Ekmeles, I can't help but think how incredible the piece could have been had Amrine collaborated with the group on the material.

Caveats notwithstanding, This is My Letter to the World still earns its recommendation for the intrepidness of its creator and for the integrity of her approach. In committing herself as a musician, conceptualist, and composer to some of the most important issues of our time, Amrine's doing her part to increase awareness of them in the best way she can. And in fashioning the album so communally and inclusively, she shows that her approach to artistic production is consistent with the values associated with the project.

April 2020