Ann Sweeten: Before Today, Beyond Tomorrow
Orange Band Records

The experience of listening to Ann Sweeten's latest release is significantly affected by awareness of the conditions under which it was created: having already survived breast cancer twice, the Steinway artist was diagnosed with leukemia in April 2017. To receive such a cruel blow after already having endured so much would understandably prove debilitating to many, yet Sweeten soldiered on with determination. That she was able to produce a collection of music as lovely as Before Today, Beyond Tomorrow is a testament to her indomitable creative spirit. The title, of course, refers to both the time before the diagnosis and to a future that while filled with uncertainty is viewed by Sweeten with hope.

While the pianist's music is often categorized as New Age, the chamber-classical settings featured on the new recording transcend categorization. That her material has reached such a high level of craft shouldn't surprise; Before Today, Beyond Tomorrow is, I believe, her fourteenth album and arrives more than two decades after the release of her debut set, Prism. The origins for her formidable technique can be traced to the intensive study she undertook at a young age with Russian-born concert pianist David Sokoloff, who she still regards as her greatest mentor; another key figure in her life is Windham Hill Records founder Will Ackerman, who co-produced the album and who's been involved in the production of many other Sweeten releases. As central to Before Today, Beyond Tomorrow as her Steinway Baby Grand is, it's not a solo piano album as guests Nancy Rumbel (English horn), Eugene Friesen (cello), Charlie Bisharat (violin), Premik Russell Tubbs (soprano sax), and Trisha Craig (flute) make key contributions.

Certain pieces (“Beyond the Clouds,” “The Empty Swing”) reflect the stages of fear, resignation, anger, acceptance, and resolution Sweeten underwent after receiving the leukemia diagnosis (the title of “Philadelphia 22,” for example, refers to the chromosome responsible for the condition); others, such as the title track and “Across the Midnight Sky” emphasize the resiliency that ultimately prevailed. Most of the ten settings are in the four- to five-minute range, yet concision in no way attenuates their emotional impact.

With Sweeten subtly sweetening the piano with synthesizer and English horn a graceful presence, “Across the Midnight Sky” opens the album on a high, the elegance and lyricism of the pianist's playing marvelous. Emotion and formal technique unite as stirringly in the subsequent title piece, which sees Sweeten crystallizing into physical form an inner state of serenity, Rumbel again helping to convey the mood as her English horn and Friesen's cello glide gracefully across the pianist's lilting patterns. A hint of Satie emerges in the oscillating chords with which “The Empty Swing” begins, but the melodic elaborations that follow mark the material as Sweeten's alone. As happens elsewhere, the emotional effect of the material is intensified by the contributions of her guests, with violin and English horn in this instance helping to make the music even more haunting.

As if the medical diagnoses weren't devastating enough, Sweeten also had to deal with the passing of two canine companions, one in 2016 and the other a year later. One of two compositions written in their memory, the gentle “Lullaby for Blackie Boo” understandably registers as one of the set's most affecting pieces, though Sweeten, with violin enhancing the presentation, opts for dignity over sentiment in the elegy. In similar fashion, Craig's flute deepens the gentle caress of the closing “Like Smoke Through a Keyhole.”

July 2019