Sharon Minemoto - Dark Night, Bright Stars (2023) Hi Res

Dark Night, Bright Stars is the follow up to my quartet’s first release, Safe Travels, which was dedicated to my late husband, jazz saxophonist and pianist, Ross Taggart. The past 7 years have presented some much needed highs and a few more lows. I’m learning to remind myself that the highs would be less significant without the lows. The quartet enjoyed some touring, followed by the stark contrast of playing a handful of livestream shows during Covid-19 at empty venues save for the musicians and crew. I revisited sorrow with the loss of some dear friends over the past few years, but came out the other side from having the joy of socially distanced visits with a few friends. Seeing them after so long felt like a tonic for sadness and worry of those days. My partner Dean received a cancer diagnosis, and in spite of that, we took a memorable holiday to France and continue to look forward to more traveling. We carry on, trying to get faster at seeking out the positives during hard times, sometimes realizing what is actually hard, and what things don’t deserve the attention they’re given.

All of this is good inspiration to write music. My quartet has been playing some of these tunes occasionally over the past few years and happily, more often over the past 9 months. The people I make this music with are the people I learned to play this genre of music with when we were college students in the 90s. It seems that I may have managed to commit these three musicians to a life-sentence with me...at least I hope so. If I had to be in jail, these are the people I would want to be locked up with because I know they would join forces to find a way to our freedom. The freedom I have in composing with these musicians’ sounds playing around in my ears is limitless. Their creativity and dedication to keep the tunes feeling fresh and improve upon our last performance inspires me every time. I hope you too will be able to enjoy this leg of the journey we are on.