Bassist Linda May Han Oh to Release New Trio Project “Strange Heavens” w/Ambrose Akinmusire & Tyshawn Sorey on Aug. 22nd, 2025
GRAMMYⓇ-winning Bassist/Composer LINDA MAY HAN OH
Refuses to Settle for a Familiar Hell
Her stunning new trio album, Strange Heavens releases August 22, 2025 on Biophilia Records
With AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE (trumpet), TYSHAWN SOREY (drums)
It has often been said that human beings tend to choose a familiar hell over a strange heaven. Whether taking stock of the long view of human history or just responding to the relentless cycles of news headlines, political issues or social media debates, and few could dispute the idiom’s truth.
Bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh is as distressed as any of us at that recursive and self-defeating tendency. These persistent concerns were obviously – perhaps inevitably – on her mind as she crafted her majestic new album, Strange Heavens.
“We all experience how easy it is to be lulled into the comfort of something that may actually be quite negative and detrimental to our well-being. We see that often in our daily lives, but I also see it in politics and in grander aspects of humanity.” – Linda May Han Oh
The title is laced with a slight irony, as Strange Heavens (set for release on August 22, 2025 via Biophilia Records) marks the first time in her estimable career that Oh has indulged in anything even remotely resembling a look backwards. The album returns the Grammy-winning bassist to the chordless trio format of her 2009 debut album, Entry, and reunites her with the trumpet player from that session, Ambrose Akinmusire.
This time around, the two are joined by drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who has forged an indelible partnership with Oh over the course of a pair of acclaimed albums and countless miles traversed as two-thirds of pianist Vijay Iyer’s trio. (The drummer on Entry, Obed Calvaire, remains a valued collaborator; witness his agile and sensitive work on Oh’s previous album, The Glass Hours.)
Strange Heavens is anything but a retreat to the comforts of the past, however. Any listener familiar with the three masterful musicians gathered here will have no doubt that this is a trio for whom nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake is anathema. Each one can safely be considered their generation’s exemplar on their respective instruments. Well beyond that fact, each has developed into a wholly original composer and conceptualist whose work vibrantly dissolves barriers of genre and style once thought sacrosanct.
Their convergence at this point in time, even with its conscious echoes of its predecessor, is not a circling back but a chart of distance traveled. At the time Entry was released in 2009, all three could have best been described as promising rising stars. Oh had just moved to the States from her home in Perth, Australia three years prior to earn her master’s degree at Manhattan School of Music.
Akinmusire had released his own debut 18 months earlier, having recorded sporadically with mentors like Steve Coleman and peers like Aaron Parks and John Escreet. Sorey had begun making waves with Iyer and saxophonist Steve Lehman, both individually and as the collective trio Fieldwork, which released its first recording in 2008. The drummer’s own second album, Koan, arrived in 2009, presenting the first major indication of the scope of Sorey’s vision.
“Both Ambrose and Tyshawn have so much available to pull from as far as technique, sound and dynamics,” Oh praises. “But they also have ridiculous ears, so everything that they do is unique to the moment and unique to the space. On top of that, there’s a sense of time and groove and the ability to make this music sing, so you always have to be ready to take advantage of the moment.”
All three seize that advantage with ferocious abandon and graceful wisdom throughout Strange Heavens. Witness the way they conjure the yearning, cautious optimism of the title track from each split-second decision, discovering each note from the empty space that yawns before them.
“Living Proof” draws from any number of inspirational stories of self-improvement, in particular that of her own mother. The agitation that underlies “Portal” is an apt illustration of stress-inducing social media, while the quiet beauty of “Acapella” is a reflection on Joni Mitchell’s “The Fiddle and the Drum,” a “healing anthem” for her family. “Home,” “Paperbirds,” “Folk Song” and “Working” comprise an informal suite, all four drawing upon images from Australian author Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic novel The Arrival.
“The Sweetest Water” combines two different parables into a tautly focused rumination on the value of community and the necessity of grit and struggle. The buoyant groove of “Noise Machinery” is an attempt to rise above the background clamor of everyday life. The remaining tracks both come from the pen of influential women composers: Geri Allen’s “Skin” and Melba Liston’s “Just Waiting.”
“I wanted this repertoire to be easily memorized and internalized. Playing in chordless trios is invigorating and rewarding, in that I have freedom when I solo, but I also have a responsibility to make sure that there’s clarity in what I’m saying and the story is being told.” – Linda May Han Oh
Responsibility has been even more keenly felt over the past four years, since the birth of her son, Nilo. (Both Akinmusire and Sorey have also become parents in the years since Entry, forging another bond within the trio.) Strange Heavens thus speaks not only to the composer’s own hopes and aspirations, but the dreams and trepidations that she holds for the future of her child.
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez
www.lindamayhanoh.com
www.biophilarecords.com
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