Mark Isham Releases AT THE CAROUSEL CLUB, First Solo Album in 15 Years
The Oscar-nominated composer recorded the album with guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and vocalist Ayo Awosika.
GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning artist Mark Isham released At the Carousel Club, his first solo album in 15 years. Having built its foundation on three uninterrupted weeks of experimentation with his collection of analog synthesizers, the Academy Award-nominated composer draws from the disciplines that have defined his multi-faceted career - jazz, electronic music, orchestral writing, and cinema - to make a recombinant statement.
The album release follows the single 'Tales of the Street Piano,' a driven, optimistic piece about the joy of music in all places, and the title track, 'At the Carousel Club,' a vivid opening statement that brings together the opposing forces that have defined his life in music: discipline and danger, composition and improvisation, machinery and breath.
When asked about the release, Isham said 'This album really is a summation of where I live as an artist today. To bring together the things I love in creating music: programmatic composition, the world of new universes that electronic music can create, and a solo improvisational voice that interacts with a creative ensemble of players.'
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 Blade, Crash, A River Runs Through It, Once Upon A Time, 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, Isham used his formidable collection of analog synthesizers - with unstable voltages, physical circuitry, and instruments that resist perfect repetition - to construct 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: Jake Isham
Photo Credit: Jake Isham
