Alex Martin, New World Jazz

My 4th CD, "Appalachian Fall," released in June 2024, consists of 10 original compositions, my settings of poems by my father, Michael Martin (1936-2023), whom former North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson called "the foremost meditative poet of Appalachia." For 30 years, Dad lived in a cabin he built on top of a mountain in southwest Virginia. There, a 20-minute walk (uphill) from the nearest road, and a mile from the nearest water or electricity line, he wrote and created visual art. Much of his poetry is about the people of his mountain community, many of whom had grown up in the hollers of the Jamison Gap that ran underneath his cabin. In responding to this legacy, my compositions seek to honor the rich Appalachian musical tradition while showing it as living, breathing art form, open to and invigorated by new influences. I'm joined on the album by some of the DC area’s finest folk, jazz, and Americana musicians, including vocalists Jess Eliot Myhre and Will McKindley-Ward, drummer Keith Butler Jr., bassist Steve Arnold, cellist Jodi Beder, banjoist Gabby Cameron, mandolinist Tom Espinola, fiddler Sarah Foard, and folk singer and storyteller Vernon Sears.