Grammy & Emmy Award-winning Mark Isham Releases 'Tales Of The Street Piano' | New Album Out 8/21
The GRAMMY winner's upcoming album AT THE CAROUSEL CLUB blends jazz, electronic, and orchestral sounds.
Mark Isham released a new single, 'Tales of the Street Piano,' on July 23 from his forthcoming solo album AT THE CAROUSEL CLUB, due out August 21. The Grammy and Emmy Award-winning, Oscar-nominated composer and trumpeter describes the track as an imagining of a piano's life outside the concert hall — in rehearsal rooms, clubs, and forgotten basements — and draws on jazz, electronic music, orchestral writing, and cinematic composition to explore the resilience of performance. The release marks Isham's first solo album in 15 years, recorded at Mad Hatter Studios over three weeks of experimentation with analog synthesizers. Isham is known for film and television scores including those for Crash, Blade, and A River Runs Through It, as well as collaborations with Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Stanley Clarke.
Photo Credit: Ray Kachatorian
'Tales of the Street Piano' follows the release of the title track, 'At the Carousel Club', a vivid opening statement that brings together the opposing forces that have defined Isham's life in music: discipline and danger, composition and improvisation, machinery and breath.
When asked about the release, Isham reflected ''Tales Of The Street Piano' imagines the life of a piano - not on the elegant concert stage - but a life in the cramped rehearsal rooms - in the dingy clubs - in a forgotten basement, but always able to bring joy and beauty and resilient energy into the life of anyone who touches it.'
Having spent his career often shaping the narrative of his collaborators — from performing with Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Stanley Clarke, while creating some of the most memorable film and television scores of the past four decades (including Once Upon A Time, Blade, Crash, A River Runs Through It, and more) — Isham's re-introduction as a solo artist challenges the assumption that a composer known for serving narrative must remain behind it. Here, he is not interpreting a director's vision or reinforcing another artist's emotional world. He is the author, protagonist, and risk-taker — placing his own trumpet voice at the center of a musical environment built without a script, a picture, or a guaranteed destination.
Recorded at the legendary Mad Hatter Studios, the album was born and built upon three uninterrupted weeks of experimentation with Isham's formidable collection of analog synthesizers. Working with unstable voltages, physical circuitry, and instruments that resist perfect repetition, he constructed enormous electronic landscapes from experimentation rather than assignment. Those compositions became the foundation for an ensemble featuring guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, vocalist Ayo Awosika, and the Orchid String Quartet.
At the core of Isham's artistry is duality. He is a meticulous composer attracted to structural control and melodic harmony, but also an improviser who believes music becomes alive when control begins to fail. The synthesizers impose systems; the players disrupt them. In an industry increasingly driven by speed, algorithms, catalog value, and immediate returns, AT THE CAROUSEL CLUB is deliberately extravagant in a different currency: time, attention, uncertainty, and world-class musicianship. Electronic yet organic, composed yet unstable, intimate yet cinematic, the album does not attempt to imitate Isham's most commercially familiar work, nor does it trade on nostalgia for his earlier solo career. Instead, it places reputation at risk in pursuit of discovery.
AT THE CAROUSEL CLUB is not a comfortable retrospective. It is a refusal to accept that an established artist's most adventurous work must belong to the past. Less a return than a new point of departure, the album captures Isham confronting the unknown — and trusting the next note to show him where to go.
Tracklist:
1. At the Carousel Club
2. Tales of the Street Piano
3. City Lore
4. Number Theory
5. My Night In An Iberian Post Office
6. A More Beautiful Question
Photo Credit: Ray Kachatorian
