“Flores para Verene/Cantos para Caramina” is the debut full-length from Tomin Perea-Chamblee, composer and multi-instrumentalist. This is an album of enchanting woodwind miniatures and beautiful meditations, an autobiographical album that pays homage to both familial and musical ancestors. The first section of the album, “Flores para Verene,” dedicated to his grandmother, includes Tomin’s lightly sketched renderings of songs by his influences—like Cal Massey, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Eddie Gale, Mal Waldron, Duke Ellington, and many others—and “Cantos para Camina,” the final section of the album, which is dedicated to his sister, has four sweet songs of meandering synth, and it all feels like it follows the structure of a memoir or a kunstlerroman, the songs and sounds of the recalled past, and then a jump into the present.
Tomin writes movingly about his grandmother, Virlenice Diaz Valencia, in the liner notes for the album (which you can also read on his bandcamp)—about how she flew up from Colombia to take care of him and his older sister when he was young, and how, when he was older, he and his family took care of her both when she was injured and later when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. “Flores para Verene” feels so much like a solo excavation of the past, through memories and recollected sounds. These renditions of tunes from old masters, the determination of Tomin to recreate them on his own, it’s a striking expression of grief and deep love. Most—maybe all—of the tracks on the first part of the album are Tomin on soprano, alto, and bass clarinets, trumpet, and cornet.
Some tracks are delicate and whispered; it can feel like you’re eavesdropping from down the hall. “Father and Son (for Cal Massey),” the first track on the album, is like that. A gentle, buoyant groove, immediately contrasted with “Come Sunday, Bass (for Ellington and Dolphy),” which, while not an outburst, sounds bigger, more forceful. There’s some of the tactile, percussive key-clattering that you hear on records from Josh Johnson or Colin Stetson. And you have on “Spirits Rejoice, Var 1” a drop-dead gorgeous rendition of an Albert Ayler tune, a compression into pure essence, like a paragraph-long Kafka story that knocks you out. Incredible.
The album ends with the “Cantos para Caramina” section, four songs: “Love,” “Life,” “Love (Alternate Take),” and “Life Revisited,” thoughtful synth studies that contain waves of both melancholy and joy. It’s so fascinating to hear these after the “Flores para Verene” songs—it’s like Tomin challenging himself to transpose his select palette of sounds from acoustic to electronic instrumentation. There’s a similar sense of a dedicated, solo artistic practice and a desire to realize ideas because you need to see them, hear them, witness them come to life.