The Harmonica in My Life is my fourth solo album and the second one to feature an exploration of instruments beyond my primary double bass. My third solo album, Quartets for Plucked Strings (Neither/Nor Records), documented a time in my life when I was an expectant father. The music on The Harmonica in My Life documents my inner life as I was experiencing the first year of fatherhood. Those experiences are responsible for the dual and somewhat paradoxical nature of the music on this album. On the one hand, there is a yearning for calm, peace, and the assurance and stability provided through ritual. On the other hand, there is dread, unease, and tension as I ponder what it means to have brought a child into a world that is marked increasingly by fascism, war, genocide, and environmental disaster. Although the music doesn’t propose resolutions to these problems, it hopefully offers some navigational path through these vicissitudes. The first piece on this album, “The Wine of the Mystic,” is scored for two chromatic harmonicas, double bass harmonica, bells, chimes, and frame drum. It reflects a longtime interest in Sufi poetry, particularly the work of Rumi and Attar, which I return to again and again as a kind of spiritual balm during challenging times as it helps reorient my place in the universe when I feel myself getting lost in the myriad and overwhelming details of the mundane world. Nature is another place I look to for this type of spiritual centering, and it underscores the approach to the second piece, “Ohio Nocturne.” This piece is scored for field recordings and a quartet of two chromatic harmonicas and two double bass harmonicas that have been slowed down to different speeds and then layered and woven together in an attempt to suggest endlessness. The field recording of the insects was made on a summer night in the Ohio countryside where I grew up. The field recording of rain on an awning was made in my backyard at my current residence in Queens, NY. Thus, these three components represent three aspects of my experience of time: my past, my present, and my own imagining of eternity. The title of the album is a nod to the great Morton Feldman, whose music has guided, shaped, challenged, and nurtured me over the years.
Sean Ali - May 2026
Sean Ali: chromatic & double bass harmonicas, bells, chimes, frame drum, field recordings
Recorded by Jonah Rosenberg at Blueberry Farms Studio in Brooklyn, NY on July 22nd, 2024. Mixed by Jonah Rosenberg. Mastered by Nathaniel Morgan. All music and cover art by Sean Ali.
