Spirit Stronger Than Blood

For downloads: Spirit Stronger Than Blood | Frank London (bandcamp.com)

Frank writes in his liner notes: Spirit Stronger Than Blood pays homage to some of the recordings that shaped my musical-spiritual aesthetic: Charles Mingus’s Changes 1&2, Booker Little’s Strength and Sanity, Pharaoh Sanders’s Peace and Love, Clifford Thornton’s Gardens of Harlem, Alice Coltrane’s Ptah, The El Daoud. Each of these artists, as different as they are from each other, shared a commonality of intention that set me on my life and career path. Their music is spiritual, political, romantic, at turns angry and peaceful, and inspires us to transcend and challenge the inequities of quotidian existence in order to make the world a better place, to heal the broken world (tikkun olam). 

                Some of the songs are inspired by Jewish texts—“Let There Be Peace” from the prayer Oseh Shalom, asking the Almighty to bring us peace; “Abundant Love” is in the Jewish prayer mode, Ahava Raba, acknowledging God’s infinite love for all of us. “Poem for a Blue Voice” is a poem by davida singer, whose partner Isabel Deconinck never let her blood cancer quash her indominable spirit. “Resilience and Resistance” are attributes that we need to get through the trials, tribulations, and indignities life can throw at us. Healing of course from disease, but also from trauma, from blind obeisance to dogma.

I was recently diagnosed with myelofibrosis, an extremely rare and fatal blood cancer, and dedicate this recording to my dear friends and colleagues who have passed away from blood diseases & other cancers—Lester Bowie, Thomas Chapin, Adrienne Cooper, Isabelle Deconinck, Jewlia Eisenberg, Ron Miles, and my namesake, Frank London Brown. Check out all of their work and be inspired.—Frank London, April 2024

Track Listing:

1. Let There Be Peace  7:10               An eternal prayer.

2. Resilience  9:20                               Dedicated to Lester Bowie

3. Spirit Stronger Than Blood  8:00  Dedicated to Jewlia Eisenberg & AnMarie Rodgers

4. Poem for a Blue Voice  11:07       Dedicated to Isabelle DeKonnink. Music for a poem by davida singer.

5. Abundant Love  9:58                      Dedicated to Tine Kindermann, Anna & Louis London

6. Resistance/Healing  10:00             Dedicated to Ron Miles

All music composed by Frank London, published by Nuju Music, BMI

Personnel: THE ELDERS are: Frank London, trumpet; Marilyn Lerner, piano; Hilliard Greene, bass; Newman Taylor Baker, drums; Greg Wall, sax (tracks 2,3&4)

Produced by Frank London

Recorded & Mixed by Andy Taub at Brooklyn Recording July, 2023

Bio: Sir Frank London  (knighted by Hungary for his work promoting Jewish and multicultural Hungarian music and culture) is a Grammy-award winning trumpeter and composer, co-founder of The Klezmatics, leader of the Astro-Hungarian supergroup Glass House Orchestra, the Shekhinah Big Band, his Klezmer Brass Allstars, and ¡No Pasaán!. He has worked with Itzhak Perlman, Pink Floyd, LL Cool J, Mel Tormé, Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, LaMonte Young, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Jane Siberry, John Zorn, Gal Costa, Angelique Kidjo, Simon Shaheen, Iggy Pop, Ran Blake, Boban Marcovic, Esma Redzepova; and is featured on over 500 recordings.

                His large-scale collaborative projects include the Cuban-Yiddish opera Hatuey Memory of Fire; Salomé, Woman of Valor (with Adeena Karasick); the trumpet concerto Freylekhs Fantasy for Trumpet & Orchestra in New York’s Central Park; the spectacle In Dreams Begin Responsibilities for the New York Public Library; the folk-opera A Night in the Old Marketplace; Davenen for Pilobolus Dance Theater, Great Small Works’ The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln; Min Tanaka’s Romance at the Tokyo Festival of the Arts; 1001 Voices: A Symphony for a New America for orchestra, chorus & soloists. He premiered the song cycle Ghetto Songs for the Elbephilharmonie in Hamburg; Weill in New York (with Eleanor Reissa) for the Kurt Weill Festival, and was musical director for Carnegie Hall’s From the Shtetl to the Stage.

His solo recordings include Ghetto Songs; Salomé Woman of Valor (with Adeena Karasick); Invocations (cantorial music); Scientist at Work; Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars’ Di Shikere Kapelye, Brotherhood of Brass, Carnival Conspiracy, The Rooftop Concert; the Nigunim Trio’s (with Klezmatics vocalist Lorin Sklamberg) Nigunim,The Zmiros Project, and tsuker-zis; The Debt (film and theater music); The Shekhina Big Band; the soundtrack to The Shvitz; the soundtrack to Pearl Gluck's Divan; 13 recordings with The Klezmatics, and four releases with Hasidic New Wave. He is featured as a trumpeter on over 500 CDs. 

Musicians: Frank London