Christina Galisatus: Without Night
Slow & Steady Records
Pianist Christina Galisatus has produced a debut album of preternatural maturity and integrity. The songs on Without Night are deeply personal expressions, originating as they do out of intense life experiences. Struggling to find her path as a musician and navigating through the complex minefields of relationships, mental health issues, and a world brought to its knees by a pandemic made the years leading up to the project a challenge. Still, as difficult as all such experiences were, the upside is that they helped bring Without Night into being. It's been a long time coming. She began learning piano at the age of five, later studied French horn, and toured internationally with symphony orchestras before studying jazz piano performance and composition at Stanford University. Throughout this developmental process, she explored songwriting, improvising, and arranging, skill-sets she would eventually bring to the creation of Without Night.
Galisatus is extremely fortunate to have found musicians wholly sympathetic to her vision and who've used their creative energies to help shepherd it into final form. The selection of vocalist was critical, and the pianist chose well in recruiting Erin Bentlage, a singer whose lovely voice has graced many a project. Making their presence also felt are tenor saxophonist Michael Blasky, bass clarinetist Steven Lugerner, guitarist Brandon Bae, bassist Joshua Crumbly, and drummer Zev Shearn-Nance. Key to the album's impact is that, while individuals do occasionally step forth and solo—Bae, Crumbly, and Bentlage are respectively featured in “What Breathes,” “Lily Pads,” and “And Sing,” to cite three instances—the overall impression forms of musicians sensitively attuned to the composer's concept and honouring it with humility.
Her coupling of introspective songwriting with sophisticated ensemble playing in a few songs calls to mind the music Joni Mitchell issued on albums such as The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. No piece on Without Night is as monumental or ambitious as “Paprika Plains,” but there are times when the tapestries Galisatus and her partners create do suggest some kinship with the directions Mitchell was pursuing during that incredibly adventurous period. As striking is the deftness with which Galisatus combines vocal-driven song-styled writing with instrumental parts.
The recording's suite-like design is reinforced by having the delicate opening song, “Always Look to the Sky,” reprise at album's end; such a gesture lends the sixteen-track set a well-rounded shape. After that one-minute prelude sets the mood, “A Fragile State” blossoms from its minor-chord piano melody intro into an enrapturing field of saxophone murmurs, brushed drums, and wordless vocals. The control with which this dreamlike tone painting intensifies testifies to the connection shared by the ensemble players. Elsewhere, Bentlage scats during the bluesy “Forward and Back,” the vocal gestures so bold one might think she's auditioning for a spot in Meredith Monk's ensemble. While the beauty of Galisatus's songwriting and Bentlage's lustrous delivery comes to the fore during “I Want to Know Her,” “Lily Pads,” and “Without Being Held,” no song is more stirring than “Your Heart Could Smile” for its hymnal quality and quiet majesty.
As much as the attention understandably fixes on Galisatus's acuity as a composer and arranger, her talent in the piano-playing department shouldn't be overlooked, as shown by the solo sequences in “Interlude I (There Can't be Light),” “Rest,” and “Interlude II (Together).” Recorded across two days in January 2022 at LA's Tritone Recording Studio, her self-produced Without Night is, in its own way and on its own terms, a triumph.February 2023