Cliff Korman - Migrations (2025) [Hi-Res]

When I encountered Sebastião Salgado’s photo exposition “Migrations”, its theme resonated and impelled me to respond with my means of expression: music. It tapped into underlying currents of my forcibly displaced immigrant family: uprooting, survival, and transformation, on one side, ambiguity, double identity, and the power of untold stories on the other. It illuminated aspects of my identity as a jazz player and the ways in which it manifests through Brazilian music.

It also struck me that on a linguistic level, the creative or associative use of citations prompts the migrations of meaning through the narrative structure: a trait that I recognized as essential not only to jazz, but to the very fabric of our times. It illuminated aspects of my formation as a jazz player and the ways in which they manifests when transposed to Brazilian popular musics. Written in direct response to Salgado’s photos, the music reflects the flux of emotional states that arise as one is forced to depart a home, a life, to suspend a former reality and join a stream of humanity in motion, emigrating, wandering, immigrating.

As I continued exploring this dynamic notion, I began to formulate a project made of simultaneously occurring elements: compositions, improvisations, and commentaries on returning citations.As with musical motion, the flow between cultures, identities, and time does not run just linearly but also on vertical, simultaneous levels. To reflect this, I work with layers of sound, sometimes congruent, sometimes not, and try to stretch the context in which they interact. Ben Ratliff, in his review in the New York Times of April 2005, noted that “one of Mr. Korman’s areas of expertise is choro, a complex, jazz-like music that started in Brazil in the late 19th century and that features a lot of counterpoint and improvisation. At this point, choro is part of the past, and a vehicle for a modern jazz composer’s imagination: a way to go backward and forward at the same time. Mr. Korman has used bits of a piece written by the composer Francisca Gonzaga and woven them into his original music the way dreams mix the real and the invented; with groups that expand and contract in size, the mood shifts from carnival to classical to jazz.”

Originally released in 2004 (Planet Arts), Migrations’ theme of forced displacement is once again sadly and frighteningly pertinent and immediate. I am grateful that it can be heard again and hope it contributes to a consideration of how to end these traumas.

This release is in honor and in memoriam of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado (1944-2025). His vision, his voice and his dedication live on through his work.

Cliff Korman: Migrations