Todd Cochran is an American pianist, composer, keyboardist, electronic musician, and conceptual artist. Early in his career, he was also professionally known as Bayeté. Cochran started his career as a teenager with saxophonist John Handy. Two years later, he joined vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s Quartet and made his jazz recording debut, composing and performing on a benchmark album for Hutcherson, “Head On” (Blue Note Records).

Cochran’s first solo project, “Worlds Around the Sun,” became a #1 jazz album. From the mid-1970s forward, Todd has experimented with and incorporated synthesizers, electronic and mixed-media concepts in his creative projects while collaborating with a wide range of artists in the genres of jazz, art rock, pop, R&B, and twenty-first-century classical.

In the ’70s, Todd released two albums on Prestige Records. He was the keyboardist, principal composer, and lead singer of Automatic Man from 1976–1978 which also featured drummer Michael Shrieve and guitarist Pat Thrall. He was also a member of Fuse One, an all-star coalition of jazz musicians who released two albums on CTI Records in the ’80s. The shortlist of his collaborations includes Peter Gabriel, Joan Armatrading, Maya Angelou, and Stewart Copeland.

His brand new album, From The Vault: Notes For The Future was released this past June 23rd, 2023 via Blue Buddha Productions and features 10 newly-crafted tracks that are sure to awaken your spiritual inner being from any slumber that it might have fallen into these past few years.

1. Painted by the Sun
2. In You I See Endless Memories
3. Isms Prisms
4. Transparencies
5. We Make Two. Two Make We
6. Eye Dreaming
7. Moon Glow
8. Hymns For the Hidden People
9. The Spinning Circle
10. Inseparable

Opening on the sternly wistful, militarily-hued Painted by the Sun and the plaintive, yet impassioned In You I See Endless Memories, they are both followed by the shimmering Isms Prisms, the reflective Transparencies, and then comes the upbeat, free flowing and quietly frenetic, synth-fed jazz of We Make Two. Two Make We.

Along next is the deliciously sculpted Eye Dreaming and the stoic, at times ethereal, yet lovingly Eastern-imbibed Moon Glow, and they are in turn backed by the delicate ambiance that surrounds Hymns For the Hidden People, the recording rounding out on the aptly-titled The Spinning Circle, closing on the perpetual motion within Inseparable.

“Notes for the future are the “imagined sometime in the past” tropes of a storyteller. Freed from everyday “isms” of convention and released from the symbolic containment of the vault, the music is an allegorical exploration in futurism, Cochran explains.

“The stream running throughout the musical narrative is a speculative commentary about our human search for meaning – and we’re reminded that as a version of our ancestors’ vision, this quest never ends.”

“From The Vault is structured around a sequence of recurring themes and develops as an unfolding tour of references, hints, and clues. Moving from one perspective to another, we connect with how our planet is perpetually in a state of seeking solutions. Within the soundscape, without words, an underlying language is speaking. Nature evolves for the sum of us, not the few. We are in a continual state of becoming. We are connected. Love is passed along, as is happiness.”

“Nevertheless, expressly for the listener, an implied sense of reasoning encourages us to feel free and let go of all things familiar. And then, “over there” in the distance, we get a passing glimpse of the sacred structure.”

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