October in Los Angeles. Horace Tapscott sits down, plays for 38 minutes, gets up. No audience, no applause. Just Tom Albach and his tape machine. This is how monuments get built - one session at a time, one composition at a time, nobody watching. "Ancestral Echoes" opens - nearly thirteen minutes tracing lineages back through time, the piano as time machine. Then Roy Porter's "Jessica," a beautiful detour into someone else's melody, proof that Tapscott could interpret as powerfully as he composed. Side B: "Restless Nights" - the title says it all. "Chartreuse Blues" - not blue, not green, somewhere in between. "The Golden Pearl" - brief, precious, hidden. And closing with "New Horizon" - four minutes of looking forward.
Sixth chapter in a series documenting Tapscott's own compositions alongside works by unknown Black composers in the Los Angeles area. Not a greatest hits. A working document. Music that wasn't meant to impress anyone - just to exist.
