Bee In The Hand [CD]

Music is perhaps the only means of storytelling in which words are optional. Violinist/composer Minnie Jordan takes this to heart, using her instrumental music, which is born of a melding of American vernacular genres (jazz, Texas fiddling, and bluegrass) and classical influences, to assemble scrapbooks of sounds, showcasing meaningful moments in her life journey. Her new recording, A Bee In The Hand, is an artistic realization of her passion, inquisitiveness, and humor.Originally from the prairie landscape outside of Coupland, Texas, Jordan grew up among music, horses, and old books. She and her sister played fiddle in the country and western swing traditions and started performing at an early age, saving up to go to summer fiddle camps. It was through these camps that Jordan found both her main source of inspiration and learned of musical opportunities outside of rural Texas. When she was eighteen, she enrolled in Berklee College of Music in Boston. Growing up, Jordan had just five or six jazz CDs and played American songbook tunes with a western swing vocabulary-hardly indicative of the lifelong love affair with jazz that she developed. Her time in Boston, especially in Berklee's Global Jazz Institute, vastly expanded Jordan's musical world, introducing her to people and sounds that became central to her development as an artist. When she graduated during the pandemic, she had to chart her next move, and an old friend leaving New York City opened an opportunity and a room, allowing her to make the City her new home.Opportunities to play in a variety of settings and styles proved to be valuable experience for Jordan. The friends and collaborators that she met in the Boston and New York music communities fed her imagination, creative output, and narrative. Some of these acquaintances became regular members of her ensemble, including pianist Evan Main, bassist Charlie Lincoln, and drummer Eliza Salem. This quartet is featured on A Bee In The Hand, along with violist Carrie Frey and cellist Ben Roberts for the lead track. The pieces that Jordan composed for A Bee In The Hand represent experiences and emotions she has inhabited throughout her time thus far in New York. The pieces are inspired by moments in time within Jordan's artistic and physical world-birdsong and silent movies, seascapes and stormy weather all have their thematic cameos. Composing these works has allowed Jordan to revisit and reassess meaningful vignettes in her life. The music that Minnie Jordan presents on A Bee In The Hand demonstrates that whether the protagonist in life's journey is a dreamer, an explorer, or a jester, the story can always be told beautifully.