“She Looks Up at the Trees” is a fantastic album from London based, all-female trio, J.A.M. String Collective.
This release is an ‘adventurous jazz improvisation meets contemporary classical & groove,
signalling the arrival of a distinctive force in the improvisational string world’.
She Looks Up at the Trees
Annalise Lam – Violin
Julia Dos Reis – Viola
Miranda Lewis-Brown – Cello
Track 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 composed by Julia Dos Reis
Track 2 composed by Miranda Lewis-Brown & Julia Dos Reis
Track 3 composed by Miranda Lewis-Brown
Track 8, 9, 10, 11 composed by Oleta Haffner
Modular Synth on Track 1 & 7 performed by Nomieye
Poem on Track 3 written & performed by Miranda Lewis-Brown
Lyrics on Track 11 written & performed by Kayes Mensah
Recorded & Mixed by Dave Holmes at Lightship Studio 95, apart from vocals on Track 10 recorded by Joshua Brandler at The Fireplace
Mastered by John Elleson-Hartley
Artwork by Guri Bosh
The first material written for the album was the ‘Elemental Suite’, composed by the talented Oleta Haffner. Miranda and I had just performed a piece of Oleta’s, called ‘Chemy’, with The Nu Civilisation Orchestra at a concert in September 2023 at the Southbank (the main feature that night was Nubya Garcia’s interpretation of Stan Getz’ ‘Focus’ album), and we spoke together about collaborating on some music in the future. Thankfully this came sooner than expected after we were awarded some money through the Peter Whittingham award in November 2023.
In discussing the direction for the album, we came up with the concept of the ‘Climate Crisis’, with a hope of the album to help encourage the continued discussion and awareness of our affected climate. And with Oleta’s film music background, she came up with a mood board and narrative for each of the four elements, and how they are affected by the changing climate. For example, in ‘IGNIS’ we hear the flickering of small flames develop into large scale expansive wildfires.