Pianist-composer Armen Donelian’s fifteenth recording as a leader, Inquiry, emphasizes a quiet milestone in his fifty-year career. Born in December 1950, Donelian studied classical piano for twelve years at the Westchester Conservatory of Music. After transitioning to jazz, he graduated from Columbia University in 1972 and studied with Richie Beirach. Donelian established himself by playing with musicians such as Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, Billy Harper, and Mongo Santamaría, contributing to Santamaría’s 1976 album Sofrito (Vaya Records).
As a leader, Donelian has composed around one hundred works and maintained a steady relationship with Sunnyside Records. His discography traces an evolution from early trio recordings like Stargazer (Atlas, 1981), featuring Eddie Gomez and Billy Hart, to solo piano albums like A Reverie (Sunnyside, 1986), Secrets (Sunnyside, 1988), Full Moon Music (Sunnyside, 2005), and Oasis (Sunnyside, 2007). Later releases like Leapfrog (Sunnyside, 2011) shifted toward a balance of composition and free improvisation, while Sayat-Nova: Songs of My Ancestors (Sunnyside, 2014) and Fresh Start (Sunnyside, 2022) explored his Armenian heritage and Middle Eastern modal elements.
Inquiry began in 2020 as a collection of unaccompanied solo piano performances featuring his new compositions. Over several years in the studio with engineer Dave Cook, Donelian expanded the project by overdubbing secondary piano lines and using equalization adjustments to separate the distinct musical voices. His intention with these overdubs was to orchestrate his own performances, drawing inspiration from Bill Evans’s overdubbed format on Conversations with Myself (Verve, 1963).
To add interaction to these structured arrangements, he later invited several veteran musicians to contribute parts. Bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Dennis Mackrel provide the rhythmic foundation, while trombonist Ed Neumeister adds brass textures to select arrangements. Vocalist Dominique Eade serves as a primary guest on the project, joining the album following her duo collaboration with pianist Ran Blake on their album Roots & Byways, also released on Sunnyside Records. Her past work with Blake emphasized sparse vocal-piano interplay and wordless phrasing over non-traditional harmonies, qualities she integrates into Donelian’s compositions.
Dominique Eade’s contribution to the recording provides a bridge between Donelian’s structured solo arrangements and the fluid dynamics of a small group. Because the album’s foundation rests on overdubbed piano parts recorded by Donelian over several years, Eade’s role requires a sensitive balance of improvisation and careful integration. Rather than delivering conventional front-facing vocal leads, her voice functions as a flexible melodic expression that mirrors, counters, and weaves through Donelian’s multi-layered piano lines. Her ability to navigate these pre-recorded tracks without making the final mix sound detached stems directly from her extensive background in spontaneous duo formats, most notably her ongoing work with Ran Blake (Whirlpool (Jazz Project, 2011), Chabrol Noir (Impulse!, 2015), Town & Country (Sunnyside, 2017)).
The album’s ten tracks alternate between solo performances and ensemble settings. Pieces like “Beyond” and “Too Soon Gone” are unaccompanied solo performances that rely on Donelian’s classical touch and acoustic clarity, a clarity tending to darkness in this recording. “Dark Moon (Lune Noire)” reinterprets Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, starting as a solo piece before Neumeister’s trombone insinuates itself in the second half of the piece to add a contrasting texture. “Blue in Green” represents the only live, group track on the album, recorded as a quartet with Anderson, Mackrel, and Eade, who sings the lyrics written by Cassandra Wilson. The last track, “Aqua Reminiscence,” developed from an alternate take of “Blue in Green,” featuring collective improvisation where Eade’s wordless vocals follow Donelian’s harmonic shifts.
On “Aqua Reminiscence,” Eade uses wordless vocals to match Donelian’s impressionistic harmonic shifts, transforming what began as an alternate take of a jazz standard into an abstract collective piece. Her approach sidesteps the traditional singer-plus-rhythm-section paradigm, opting instead to blend her vocal timbres with Neumeister’s trombone and Donelian’s acoustic voicings. The lengthy “Inverted Reality” moves the ensemble into a more complex, angular structure driven by Neumeister’s trombone and Eade’s vocal probing. Throughout the project, her timing and control allowed her to inject a sense of immediate, live interplay into a production process that was highly technical, ensuring that the final product kept an organic, conversational quality.
Inquiry connects with the reflective style of Donelian’s earlier solo albums, such as A Reverie, while adopting the harmonic language found on Fresh Start. The multi-layered studio tracking presents a unique method for his catalog. Eade’s participation helps sustain a sense of interplay despite the overdubbed production process. Her vocals operate as an additional instrument within the arrangements rather than a conventional lead, contributing directly to the dialogue of the compositions.
I love Armen's music, can't wait to listen to this!