Building Characters Charles Chen

• 1 Kismet 04:55
• 2 Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior 06:54
• 3 If on a winter's night a traveler 06:46
• 4 Colossus of Rhodes 06:40
• 5 Alice in Wonderland 06:03
• 6 Straw Hat 05:29
• 7 Soph, Aeon of Wisdom 06:25
• 8 Stardust 07:41
• Total Runtime 50:53

Info for Building Characters

Charles Chen's new album features an all-acoustic Horace Silver-esque band with Randy Brecker on trumpet.

Jazz is full of legends – the Duke, the Count, the Lady. We know their names, study their harmonies, and memorize their solos. We listen to their recordings, referencing albums from 1961 at the Village Gate or from Slugs in 1970. We listen to musicians across their lifetimes, following how their musical abilities crescendo or diminish. We hope, by remembering them and passing along their tales, we can understand the geniuses behind the music. These stories keep the music alive. They keep jazz alive.

In this album, I paired jazz legends with other legends that grabbed my attention from fiction, myth, and anime. Using them as inspiration, I wanted to build sonic portraits of these characters, capturing the feel of their stories and their music in my original compositions.

Charles Chen, piano
Randy Brecker, trumpet
Bob Sheppard, tenor saxophone
Lawrence Feldman, tenor saxophone
Mike Richmond, bass
Adam Nussbaum, drums

Charles Chen
is a San Francisco Bay Area pianist who performed or recorded with notable musicians such as Randy Brecker, Billy Drummond, Bob Sheppard, Roy McCurdy, Adam Nussbaum, Mike Richmond, Ralph Moore, Peter Washington, and Kenny Washington. He has played at Yoshi's, San Jose Jazz Festival, and Freight and Salvage. In 2019, he won first place at the Jazz Search West competition. Charles leads a trio and has performed internationally in Taiwan, Singapore and Japan. His debut album, Charles, Play!, was featured as one of the Best Albums of 2024 in Downbeat Magazine.

Charles is also a passionate educator and his students have gone to the best music schools in the nation (Juilliard, MSM, Berklee, NEC) and won a variety of awards (YoungArts distinctions, all-state band placements, and first place for arranging and performance in the Charles Mingus competition).

He serves as the historian of the South Bay Traditional Jazz Society. He is also an admin to Jazzcord, a popular jazz discord community with over 7000 members, where he writes historical essays and album reviews regularly.

This album contains no booklet.