Vibraphonist Chris Dingman has at all times been a considerate musician, his distinctive, kinetic fashion offering each emotional uplift and meditative escape. Together with his new album, Journeys Vol. 2, Dingman turns from pure jazz musician into shaman, seer, comforter, advisor, lover, chief, good friend. Comprised solely of solo items with minimal results, the collective materials and its cyclic titles: “Transit,” “Journey,” “Dream, Ever Dream,” “Enter,” “Return,” take the listener on a journey so pliable and elastic, one can nearly select his/her personal entry/departure level, so liberating and oddly comforting is the music. 

Journeys Vol. 2 is influenced partly by Dingman’s examine of mbira, the African thumb piano, evidenced within the album’s non-grid-like repetitions that equally soothe and penetrate. It’s additionally influenced by the point Dingman spent enjoying whereas his father was in hospice care, 5 hours of which had been compiled on his 2020 solo debut, Peace. After that, he started performing in areas geared towards meditation, sound therapeutic, and religious follow. He even started a collection of digital performances referred to as Transformations, throughout which viewers defined the problems and hardships they’re going through, and Dingman turned these ideas into music. 

Just like the music of Wayne Shorter, or the fantastic thing about animals at play, or the liberating emotions obtained from meditation, therapeutic massage, or worship, that is true soul/spirit/physique music: shimmering, glowing, elevating, therapeutic.