Sun-Mi Hong – Fourth Page: Meaning of a Nest (2025) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Sun-Mi Hong – Fourth Page: Meaning of a Nest (2025)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:56 minutes | 752 MB | Genre: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Edition Records

Jazz drummer and composer Sun-Mi Hong left South Korea for the Netherlands more than a decade ago, along the way trading the piano bench for the drummer’s throne. That move shaped both her art and her sense of home, a restless and searching energy that surges through Fourth Page: Meaning of a Nest. A follow-up to her 2022 album Third Page: Resonance and her fourth “page” in an ongoing series of deeply personal recordings, Fourth Page explores home not as a fixed place but as something built through movement, connection and the networks we create.”The scene here is so international, it’s prompted deep reflection on my identity and who and what I want to become,” she told the European Jazz Network, of the Amsterdam scene. “I’ve been thinking about this for over ten years and only recently do I feel like I’m on my path.” Unlike London’s cosmic jazz, which channels Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra in its reach for the beyond, Hong’s aesthetic is directed inward, searching for an anchor through structure and connection. Her music is less an escape into the unknown than a journey that plots the map of belonging.

Her first notes on Third Page were a few hard cymbal crashes, a statement of lingering presence. On Fourth Page she begins with the light ring of a delicate and fleeting chime. The horn players, longtime collaborator Alistair Payne on trumpet and Nicolò Ricci on tenor sax, stretch out drone-like accents, deepening the atmosphere before the full band—also featuring Chaerin Im (piano) and Alessandro Fongaro (bass)—eases in.

Those first moments of opener “Meaning of a Nest I: Finding” start quietly, but by the end those whispers have turned to yowls as the band swells around Hong’s restless pulse. There and throughout the seven other pieces, she and her band swing their way through compositions that feel meticulously crafted yet alive with improvised possibility.

Structurally, Hong’s songs spread out like labyrinths, winding through hidden corridors before bursting into open air. “Toddler’s Eye” moves like an Escher staircase, its oblong rhythm seeming to ascend and descend at once. Her drumming spirals beneath the band, creating shifting patterns that never quite settle. The horns and piano stretch and contract the melody in a restless loop. The ballad, “A Never-Wilting Petal I: Journey,” draws Ricci and Im into a fluid exchange, their lines overlapping, diverging and circling back in conversation. At nearly nine minutes, album closer “Heart Stone” is the longest and most patient of the eight songs, evolving at its own unhurried pace, as if Hong is handing out the charts measure by measure while the band plays. – Randall Roberts

Tracklist:

1-01. Sun-Mi Hong – Meaning of a Nest I: Finding (05:30)
1-02. Sun-Mi Hong – Meaning of a Nest II: Perpetuating (04:22)
1-03. Sun-Mi Hong – Escapism (02:52)
1-04. Sun-Mi Hong – Toddler’s Eye (03:56)
1-05. Sun-Mi Hong – A Never-Wilting Petal I: Journey (03:42)
1-06. Sun-Mi Hong – A Never-Wilting Petal II: Loneliness (05:59)
1-07. Sun-Mi Hong – A Never-Wilting Petal III: Blossom (04:56)
1-08. Sun-Mi Hong – Heart Stone (08:35)

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