Chris Potter Reimagines John Brown’s Raid on New Album

Chris Potter has never been the type to shy away from history’s weight. His new record, Alive with Ghosts Today, takes on the story of abolitionist John Brown, whose 1859 raid on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry was meant to spark a revolt among enslaved people in the American South. The music doesn’t narrate events in any literal sense, but the shape of it feels right. Potter assembled a small, unusual ensemble around Bill Frisell’s guitar, bringing in clarinet, violin, trombone, and his own tenor and soprano saxophones. What emerges has a certain rag-tag Americana to it, rough-edged and evocative.

Frisell opens “Osawatomie Brown” over a simple bass line from Burniss Travis and the backbeat of Nate Smith. The sound is immediate and open, frontier space conjured in a few bars. Potter and trombonist Zekkereya El-magharbel carry the theme in low, wide-interval harmony before Rane Moore on clarinet and violinist Sara Caswell add more color. The rhythm section keeps things grounded while the soloing takes some hip turns. There is nothing clean about it, which suits the subject matter perfectly.

“Mine Eyes” borrows its title from the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” itself built from the folk tune “John Brown’s Body.” A grooving modern jazz theme gives way to something less polished: tremolo, mud, free improvisation woven through the horns. The terrain around the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers becomes audible. The album does its best work when it lets the ensemble voices interrupt each other. “This Earth Would Have No Charms for Me” takes its name from an 1859 letter by Harriet Newby, who was enslaved, to her husband. The slow 6/8 theme has a throaty elegance. Caswell’s violin solo carries real feeling before Frisell moves over the full band, mournful and oddly hopeful at once.

Potter’s tenor remains the main voice, bright and varied, always with a human side. The duets with Frisell, spare and clear, ground tracks like “Heavens in Scarlet” before the full band fills in. Alive with Ghosts Today doesn’t try to pin history down. It lets the music move through what remains.