Missoula musician channels life changes into new album
A move across the country. Plans to start a family, reconfigure a career, find a musical community in a smaller city with more open space than venues.
What would that sound like?
Naomi Moon Siegel, a trombonist and composer who's lived in Missoula the past eight years after arriving from Seattle, offers one answer with an evocative new instrumental album, "Shatter the Glass Sanctuary."
The title, which also belongs to the centerpiece multi-part suite, has begun to feel aspirational to her, she said in an interview.
Among other things, it means "not taking things so seriously, not holding things on a pedestal, not holding things so preciously," she said.
The music, rooted in jazz traditions and written for a six-piece band with equal parts melodic arrangements and improvisation, also relates to internal silos that might prevent us from being truly present.
"Writing this music just helped me break down some of the walls and the compartmentalization of the more challenging feelings associated with my move," she said.
The album of original tunes covering a full range, from up-tempo post-bop to contemplative ballads, is out Nov. 8 on BandCamp, an artist-friendly streaming and download platform, as well as Spotify and Apple Music.
A move
Siegel has pursued music around the country. The Massachusetts native attended Oberlin Conservatory in the Midwest, then landed in Oakland and Seattle, where she studied with Julien Priester, a legend on their shared instrument who's performed with Herbie Hancock; and keyboardist-composer Wayne Horvitz, a celebrated bandleader who's worked with Bill Frisell and John Zorn.
In 2019, her first solo album, "Shoebox View," was featured in Downbeat. She thinks of it as an instrumental singer-songwriter album, with little improvisation compared with the new record, where she opened up more space for the band members' voices.
After moving to Missoula, she began performing around town, starting new projects like monthly free improvisation sessions, hosting concerts with a listening room atmosphere, and performing back in Seattle. The band on this record is based there: trumpeter Ray Larsen, pianist Marina Albero, guitarist Andy Coe, bassist Kelsey Mines, and percussionist Christopher Icasiano.
The title suite runs about 25 minutes and five parts, bearing names such as "Holding All the Broken Pieces," "Tethered" and "Shatter It," and moving between vastly different genres and moods, with written parts and improvised sections that show off the band's tight interplay.
The first section is about "holding the different broken parts of myself, and getting to know the texture and the nuance and the edges and the contour of all that," she said.
The second part, "Tethered," is about finding connections amid that feeling. The catharsis comes in "Shatter It," an anthemic and fast-paced finale as she belts a melody repeatedly.
She felt as though she'd "busted through all this stuff that was keeping my voice quiet, and then finally I could hear myself again," she said.
Icasiano, who's played with Siegel about 10 years, said they've connected more while working on this project, both musically and with her work on gender justice issues in the jazz world.
To his ear, she has an intuitive way of writing that's "catchy, compelling and challenging" and doesn't get hung up on genres, only a "natural expression of the melodies she's hearing," he said.
While the suite gave him fresh insights into what she'd been going through, the process was collaborative and they all brought ideas to the arrangements, developing them over the course of time into much different forms than they began.
"It's Naomi's music and it's her story, but it was really cool that she really trusted us to bring our own voices to it as well," he said.
The rest of the album traverses other styles and moods. The upbeat opener, "The Adventures of Violet and Pilot," is named after she and her wife's late English bulldog, Violet, and refers to a series of in-jokes with them, including a guy they'd pass in Capitol Hill who'd say "Violet and Pilot" regardless of who happened to be taking the canine out for a walk.
"It feels like the active daydream of a lazy bulldog," she said.
"Sabotage" veers between free improvisation and structured parts, with a tumultuous solo from Siegel. During the recording, their producer, Allison Miller, asked her to write a contrasting piece, something shorter, maybe faster. The title refers to "the way phone addiction can sabotage the creative process" and create more distraction than connection.
One gently flowing and sweeping tune, "Seep Into My Pores," is named after another phrase to remind herself to be more present with the "vastness of this place," as she put it.
"Future Light" kicks off with mournful harmonies and a dream-like quality, with a showcase for Mines' bowed bass. Siegel wrote it after spending time with her young niece and thinking about the goings-on in the news, and how to "hold those contradictions with intense hope and inspiration and excitement about the future amidst this backdrop of instability and destruction," she said.
If you go
Siegel has three local events for the album release:
Friday, Nov. 8: Listening party at Suite Two. Doors at 7 p.m. Listen to the album, followed by a Q&A with Siegel moderated by Bill Kautz.
Saturday, Nov. 9: Duende Libre featuring Siegel at the Westside Theater, 7:30 p.m. $15 or $10 for students.
Sunday, Nov. 10: Siegel's MSO Trio at Draught Works Brewery, 6-8 p.m. No cover.
A grant and a mentor
To develop the music, Siegel received a grant from Chamber Music America's Performance Plus program, which connects gender minority and women-led ensembles with a musician mentor and six listening/workshop sessions. Siegel applied with the suite and a few of the other songs, and specifically to work with Miller, a drummer and composer who's made a number of adventurous albums with a conceptual frame to hang the music on. Siegel brought Miller and her band, Boom Tic Boom, out for a performance at the Dennison Theatre in 2018.
She'd originally planned to record in 2020, but the pandemic put it on hold. She also had her first child with her partner. Then she was awarded the grant in 2022 and had a path to move ahead.
Miller, who's based in New York, was in Seattle for the recording session. Among other benefits of the grant, Siegel said it's rare for a band to have this many rehearsal sessions before recording.
"We don't usually have the budget for that. Time is scarce for folks who are hustling and working," she said.
The windfall "let us simmer in the music and really just say, 'OK, what shape do we want to give this?'" she said.
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