Interview with contemporary jazz pianist Charlie Stacey

Fulton Bryant-Anderson
Staff Reporter 

U.K. jazz pianist Charlie Stacey, known for playing with Yussef Dayes and Tom Misch, is one of the U.K.’s most active pianists in the contemporary jazz scene. Stacey merged virtuosity and raw emotion in his new album The Light Beyond Time.

How long have you been working on the tracks for the album?

Music is Healing, I wrote a really long time ago… maybe eight years ago. I envisioned it as more of a poppy disco track…same with Rivers of Gondor. I’ve had that track for about seven years and recorded it before. The other tunes I wrote only a couple of years ago. 

How did you decide to record the music for this album?

This is direct recording, where you go into the studio, an incredibly old studio, in Harlem near Amsterdam, Holland and it’s got old vintage gear (no modern stuff) and you go in and you just record. It’s on the site of an old vinyl pressing plant, you get the record there straight to disk but you have to record each side of the vinyl in only one take the whole way through.

Where were you when you recorded the album? Physically, mentally, spiritually? 

Physically, I was in Holland at the studio near Amsterdam. In terms of where I was at, I’d been on tour for quite a bit and it was still the middle of the COVID pandemic. Everyone was aware of COVID. For me it was a very intense period, I’d been living out with my parents in the countryside, not much human contact… I think the coronavirus gave me a renewed focus and sense of direction because it forced me to confront a lot of things in myself due to pure isolation. 

I’m sensing a vibe that the album shows the positive light of music. Was that a theme you were drawing for?

Definitely. That’s sort of the whole idea of the record. He [Alba Eiler] had a track called Music is the Healing Force of the Universe and [that] I was influenced by. Music that I respond to the most, has a spiritual message a lot of the time. That is trying to expand people’s consciousness and take them into a more enlightened perspective, not to get too lofty or anything but just kind of preach to them, try and make them feel positive which I guess it’s a bit ironic because the record is quite dark in a lot of places. 

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