Q&A
Q: What’s the starting point for this album - what story are you telling?
A: I started with the story of John Brown - an abolitionist in the mid-1800s, just before the American Civil War. He led a small, mixed group to take over the armoury at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia and declare enslaved people free. It failed. Most were killed on the spot, and Brown was hanged soon after.
What stayed with me was the scale of the act and the contradictions inside it. He was clearly on the right side of history, but he used violence. He wasn’t driven by personal gain, but by belief. That tension - moral clarity alongside complexity and tragedy - felt like something that still echoes now. That’s what drew me in. This perfectly illustrates all the things I’m trying to work through myself.
Q: Why did that story feel important to write about now?
A: It captures a lot of what I’ve been trying to process - not just historically, but in the present. These aren’t closed chapters. The ideas, the conflicts, the weight of those decisions, they still sit with us.
That’s where the title comes from as well - Alive with Ghosts Today. It’s taken from a Langston Hughes poem about John Brown. That line really says it - these histories aren’t distant, they’re active - these ghosts are still with us. Hughes’ grandmother was engaged to one of the people who was killed.
Q: The instrumentation is unusual - how did you arrive at that sound?
A: I knew I wanted something bigger than a small group, but not a full orchestra. Enough colour to write with, but still flexible. And I wanted it to sound somehow American in a weird way.
I landed on guitar, bass, drums, violin, clarinet and trombone. It’s an odd mix, but that was intentional. I imagined something like a small-town band - not quite enough players for a full ensemble, so you work with what’s there. That imperfection felt right.
There’s also something about those instruments together that places the music in an American space - guitar and violin especially. It creates a certain tone without forcing it.
Q: You brought together a group that hadn’t really played together before - why these musicians?
A: It was instinct, mostly. I was thinking about specific sounds as I was writing. Bill Frisell was central from the start. His sound sits naturally in this musical world - there’s a sense of space and history in how he plays.
Nate Smith brings a deep sense of groove and groundedness. I hadn’t played with him in a while, so it felt right to reconnect there. Burniss Travis was someone I hadn’t worked with much, but I knew he had the feel the music needed.
With Sara Caswell, I needed someone who could move between written material and interpretation naturally - she brought that straight away. Rane Moore came from a more new music background, I’d heard her playing with the pianist David Viralles, but had the flexibility to shape the music in a personal way.
And Zekkereya El-Magharbel was new to me - suggested to me by Craig Taborn. His sound stood out immediately. He’s introducing Egyptian Maqam scales and applying it to trombone - that’s a cool sound. There’s something raw and slightly unpredictable in his approach that added character.
It was a risk. Most of us didn’t know each other well. But everyone came in with focus and intent, and it lifted the music beyond what I’d imagined.
Q: How did you approach the writing itself?
A: There were a lot of reference points in my head while writing. I was thinking about Aaron Copland - especially Billy the Kid - that sense of open, American space. There’s also a thread of blues, funk, and folk language running through it.
We were talking about the Staple Singers and the tremolo guitar. With each song there was a set of influences. The last Movement Mine Eyes, I was thinking about Charles Ives.
Some pieces lean into specific ideas. There’s a movement, Into Africa, using African rhythmic structures, reflecting what John Brown called “going into Africa” when heading south. It’s really about the mix - how these influences collide and sit together. That’s part of the identity of American music, and it felt right for this story.
Q: What did the session feel like once it all came together?
A: It felt focused. Everyone treated the music seriously, but also brought themselves into it. When that balance works, something shifts. It stops being about individuals and becomes something shared. That happened here. It felt like the music carried more weight than anything I could have done on my own.
Thanks for this great interview, Maikol. I've been collecting albums by Chris since 1997 and have almost everything he's created or played on. And this new album is a special one, for sure. At first, with the brief opening, I thought it would be more chamber jazz, but the second song settled into a deep groove that continued throughout the album. It's the kind of album you can listen to frequently and hear more every single time. This is the kind of jazz album that wins Grammys!