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Saxophonist Wayne Escoffery reflects on love, loss, and solitude on his stunning new album, the atmospheric and haunting, Alone, featuring a remarkable all-star quartet with Ron Carter, Carl Allen, and Gerald Clayton
In the summer of 2023, saxophonist and composer Wayne Escoffery found himself alone in a way that he’d never quite experienced before. He was away from home, on sabbatical in Europe with a month to himself between tours. A long-term relationship had just ended, and he was confronted with the loss of friendships that he’d once valued. Worst of all, he’d suffered a broken finger that left him unable to play the saxophone for the first time since he’d picked up the horn in high school.
“Normally, my coping mechanism would be the saxophone,” Escoffery laments. “But even that wasn’t available to me for about nine weeks, so I just had to be alone in my thoughts.”
He made good use of this alone time, conceptualizing the music that makes up his striking and singular new album, Alone. What emerged from that solitude was an extended mood piece, an album unique in Escoffery’s typically wide-ranging catalogue for its sustained atmosphere of stark melancholy and searching introspection. The music is breathtakingly interpreted by an all-star quartet featuring iconic bassist Ron Carter, drummer Carl Allen, and pianist Gerald Clayton.
The music Escoffery compiled for Alone – a carefully selected blend of original compositions and familiar standards – vividly captures the profound richness and variety of emotion that loneliness can evoke. Although it was conceived during isolation, heartbreak, regret, and reflection, the experience of the album is far richer even than that. In the end, “I was forced to reflect on life and what was most important to me,” Escoffery concludes. “The concept of this album grew out of that reflection.”
