Ray Larsen

Ray Larsen
Songs to fill the air

Release date: 4/3/20

Slow & Steady Records announces the release of trumpeter and composer Ray Larsen’s fifth album, Songs to fill the air. A versatile trumpeter and luminary of the Seattle improvised music scene, Ray Larsen has built a busy career as a new-music bandleader and freelancer over the last decade. But in 2016, many of his strongest musical friends started moving away, and a large handful of his long-established bands ended almost overnight. For two years, Ray withdrew from bandleading and began a period of reflection and re-focusing. 

After winning a coveted 2018 Artist Residency at the Bloedel Reserve, he spent a summer month in solitude inside the 150-acre forest and botanical garden. The work that emerged there took on a new sound. In some ways a return to the music of his youth, Ray began experimenting with song and lyric writing, multi-track composition, and audio production. Over the next year, he orchestrated, recorded and mixed this material, and invited some of his favorite improvisers to join in along the way.

The result is Songs to fill the air, an orchestral-folk crossover album sparkling with all of the lyricism and sonic exploration of his past work, but also featuring, for the first time ever, Ray’s silvery voice and careful song craft. Reminiscent of the eclectic arrangements of Van Dyke Parks and the horn-forward tones of Sufjan Stevens, Ray’s debut songwriting effort is as original and complex as one might expect from this musical chameleon. Yet at the heart of this work is a core of earnestness and a spirit of celebration. With this album, Ray hopes “to express the powerful moment we are living in, and the great opportunity we have to shape our present and future”.