For those unaware, musicians know well that the freedom of live performance, improvisation, and collaboration inspires a chain reaction of creativity. For award-winning pianist, composer, and vocalist Mavis Pan, this statement could not be truer.

Pan found herself ecstatic in January 2023 when, after a three-year hiatus from touring due to the international effects of the global pandemic, borders reopened and she took her quintet on tour to Saudi Arabia. Shortly after this renewed elation of live performance, Pan experienced a dramatically different emotional turn.

On her return journey to New York, Pan visited her home country of Taiwan to unite with her Father, whom she had not seen in years. Since her previous visit, Pan’s Father had suffered from a stroke and the debilitating isolation of the pandemic’s travel limitations.

This heart-wrenching experience and life shift impacted Pan heavily and caused her to think back with nostalgia upon her life.

Pan’s experiential trifecta of exhilaration, demoralization, and retrospection led her to create Rising, a mosaic of works chronicling the ebb and flow of life’s highs and lows and Pan’s journey to rise above it all.

Releasing on October 4th, 2024, the album, which Pan co-produced with acclaimed woodwind player Ted Nash, features an all-star lineup including Nash (tenor saxophone, flute, and clarinet), Geoff Burke (alto and soprano saxophones, alto flute, and clarinet), Mark Wade (bass), Jared Schonig (drums), and Pan herself on piano and voice.

1. Chances Are Odd
2. Falling
3. Rising
4. Black Sky
5. Pájaro Solitario
6. Confessions
7. Formosa Spring
8. Tarab Suite I. Vices
9. Tarab Suite II. Waiting
10. Tarab Suite III. Seventy Times Seven
11. The Last Rose of Summer
12. You Must Believe in Love

This deeply emotional, heartfelt and dutifully embroidered new recording, opens on the fanciful Chances Are Odd and the stoically-structured waltz Falling, and then we get the languishing, at first, latterly skittish title track Rising (derived from Pan’s experience doing exactly what its name signifies: rising despite adversity), before we are graced with the gentile toe tapper Black Sky, the soaring Pájaro Solitario and the luxuriant Confessions.

This wondrous musical imprint of the places Mavis has traveled to and the special people she have encountered, and become inspired by along the way continues onward with the confident Formosa Spring and then we get the three-piece Tarab Suite: the furtive Vices, the wistful Waiting, and then comes a sprightly Afro-funk groove that beats throughout Seventy Times Seven, the album rounding out on the mournful, yet hopeful yearn of The Last Rose of Summer, closing on the seductive You Must Believe in Love.

For Pan, Rising stands as far more than an album, for the music on it is akin to thumbing through a history book of her life. A collection of 12 pieces (13 on the digital deluxe edition), Rising comprises a selection of works that are carefully curated and span a 20-year period of the artist’s life and compositional oeuvre.

Each piece is an imprint of a moment, a person, a place, or a challenge that Pan has faced and overcome. “Jazz is about being ‘in the moment,’ and I set out to capture each fleeting moment with a song,” Pan says. “There is no better way for a composer to express her longings and frustrations than putting fingers to keyboard and notes on paper.”

Rising undoubtedly recounts a vast array of moments and emotions. With pieces that encapsulate the joy and thrill of being welcomed as a “diva” on her Saudia Arabian tour; to returning to the almost magnetic draw of New York; to recounting the obstacles she faced as a woman of color and immigrant upon her first arrival in America; to the world-changing consequences of her Father’s stroke and making peace with her transformation from being little girl whom her father loved to spoil to being his caretaker, this album is a pouring out of Pan’s heart – and masterfully painting that overflow onto an ebullient musical canvas.

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