Ian Carey Quintet+1 - Fire in My Head (The Anxiety Suite) (2020)

"An ideal soundtrack for these disquieting times. ‘Fire in My Head’ was composed and recorded long before COVID-19 became a household name, but it’s about as tuned into the zeitgeist as an N95 face mask. ” —Andrew Gilbert, The East Bay Times

Fire in My Head (The Anxiety Suite) is the fifth album from San Francisco-Bay Area based trumpeter-composer Ian Carey. After being awarded Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works grant in 2017, Carey turned inward to explore something he’s dealt with his entire life – anxiety. His approach to this five-part, long-form suite, which premiered at SFJAZZ in 2019, differed from his previous works. “Normally, I have to get into a composition before I figure out where it’s going to go. But in this case I found that once I had decided on the anxiety theme, that bigger picture colored my decisions,” notes Carey. “That was new for me, but it ended up helping the process along.”

Although Fire in My Head began from what has been an endless cycle inside Carey’s head as long as he can remember, he’s noticed that more recently—since the 2016 election, to be exact—he shares this affliction with many in his community. That includes the members of his band – the Ian Carey Quintet+1 – comprised of many of the Bay Area’s most in-demand improvisers and collaborators. (The trumpeter regards himself as the “+1” to this quintet.) “The emotions behind the piece were not a stretch for any of us,” Carey says. “And that helped – maybe not so much for our mental health, but for the music.”

The emotions expressed mirror Carey’s compositional style – sophisticated, dense, and full of contrapuntal twists and turns. Yet, Carey balances this density with accessible melodies, and plenty of space for his bandmates to improvise, which does every bit as much to shape each movement of the suite. “I feel like there doesn’t need to be such a dividing line between chamber music and straight-ahead jazz,” notes Carey. “There are textures and concepts that are really useful in both contexts.” While the 2016 election sparked Fire in My Head, the music goes much deeper, exploring a psychological process (not unlike the Kübler-Ross stages of grief) that comes with anxiety – something we’ve all experienced to various degrees. In this way, each movement is stacked with hooks, grooves, and improvisational smarts that are as universally relatable as the subject at hand.

"The trumpeter's ambitious 5-part suite is poignance, high spirits & creative chaos..." — Philip Booth