MANtrio was formed in 2019 as a performer-composer collective where we could follow our curiosity, experiment with ideas that intrigued us and create art that centered on process and interaction, rather than creating a stylistically-definable product. For almost a year we met every week to experiment with a wide variety of ideas, drawing source material from jazz and black American music traditions, contemporary, experimental and medieval musics, visual art, literature and poetry, mysticism, symbolism and mythology, as well as mining our experiences as women, in both music and the world at large.

This album explores a theme that was recurring in our work, that of transformation: the transformative process of grief, gender and spiritual transformation, cycles of growth and change in the natural world and the transformative effects of time – each of which has personal significance. With improvisation at its core, this music features original graphic scores, free improvisations, and compositions by each member of the group. The music, and the journey of making this album, is more than merely the sum of these individual voices, instead serving as an honest document of the trust and transformation of these musicians into a single, unified voice.

About the Music
1. Passing
Passing is based on a graphic score that was created for MANtrio by artist Maggie Chen. Consisting of primarily arcs and circles, we chose to interpret this in a linear way, following arcs and arriving at moments (circles).
- Melanie Sehman

2. Five of Cups
Five of Cups comes from the tarot, which depicts a cloaked figure with three overturned cups and two upright cups. In the background is a bridge over a stream, which was pivotal to my reading of the card. I first pulled it at a time when I didn't realize there were overturned cups in my life I had to address. The main theme, heard in the piano and bass is set to the words ‘Over, Over, Over the bridge’. We process the emotions on this side of the bridge and then return over with another way of counting to five.
- Sage Romey

3. Heirloom Scoby
I wrote this funny little tune while at a composer’s residency at Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Shelton, WA, inspired by the silliness of advertising copy on a bottle of kombucha. Perspective is important, and sometimes we just have to laugh at ourselves a little.
- Melanie Sehman

4. Iris
I wrote “Iris” on the out-of-tune piano in my grandparents’ house shortly after my grandfather passed away. Hanging above the piano was a painting of irises done by my grandmother, and as part of my practice of musical mediation, this song emerged. The music came before the words, but the lyrics became even more pertinent as the world shut down about a month later:

Patiently waiting for a hint of sun.
It's long since I've been buried and I'm not the only one.
Do we nestle down deeper, grow our roots,
or do we bloom?
You can’t see anything in a dark room.

Dark periods where so much is going on beneath the surface - the healing, the allowing roots to grow- balanced by the brief and beautiful periods of blooming. The transformation of the iris is one of continual change and growth.
- Sage Romey

5. It’s Simply a Matter of Work
One of our ongoing practices as a group is to pull three cards from the Oblique Strategies deck of creative prompts and improvise on them together. We’ve done this in rehearsals and with audiences in performances. “It’s Simply a Matter of Work” was recorded during a break in our three-day recording session for this album and was intended only as a kind of creative palate cleanser to help us get back to the “real” work. It ended up being one of our favorite recordings, as it captures the spirit of our trio.
- Melanie Sehman

6. Metamorphosis
One of the things that we have done from the very beginning is experimenting with non-standard musical prompts, limits and structures. In some of our first rehearsals we played poems by Walt Whitman, stories about our favorite pets, pictures of landscapes, several of Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations, and graphic scores. As a percussionist, graphic scores are familiar territory for me and I have always been fascinated by the wealth of possibility that is held within the images and the ways in which improvisors, both solo and in groups, interpret and realize these scores. I created Metamorphosis long before this album was set in motion as an experiment in trying to capture on paper transformation through time. Beginning with the thick lines surrounding the central bar of blank space, I adapted a process from multidisciplinary artist Jennifer Urso, adding one line at a time, drawing freehand and attempting to follow as closely as possible the line before. The result is a visual record of the physical changes in my pen stroke, muscle control and concentration over time. “Imperfections” such as a shaky hand or a wandering mind become seemingly three-dimensional rolling waves and shapes of varying density that are then ready to be transformed into sound, where they will exist for but a moment. The top one-third of the score references and adapts some of Anthony Braxton’s language music, graphic symbols that in my opinion are intuitive for many improvisors, but which leave ample room for varying interpretations. I owe a huge thanks to Jennifer Urso whose series “Lines Are Never the Same” (2018-2019) was a spark for this score and whose body of work is continually inspiring. You can see Metamorphosis at www.melaniesehman.com/projects/mantrio.
- Melanie Sehman

7. Norman Ray Dellecker
For as long as it’s been a part of my life I’ve been fascinated by the ways in which technology mediates our lives and molds our behaviors. The title of this tune came before the music, via a slide-to-type mis-translation on my phone. I don’t remember anymore what I had intended to type, but the full mis-translation was: “I’ll see the liquor division with Norman Ray Dellecker.” This sparked my imagination and the music is the story of this fictional character, Norman Ray Dellecker.
- Melanie Sehman

8. Radicantis Luminis
In some branches of Western herbal lore, it is said that plants are physical manifestations of archetypal souls. These essences filter down through the cosmos until reaching the soil of our planet. Once on earth, their forms generously offer their wisdom, virtues, and healing abilities.

While contemplating the beauty of this idea, I came across Hildegard von Bingen’s antiphon, “O spectabiles viri.” Her symbols struck me—lucida umbra (shining shadow), viventem lucem (living, piercing light), and radicantis luminis (deep-rooted or rooting light). While Hildegard was speaking of a different incarnation, I couldn’t help but imagine the celestial journey of more literal plants.

The music of this piece was drawn from fragments of Hildegard’s antiphon. Beginning with a chord made up of the pitches associated with the word “luminis,” and ending with the partial melody for “radicantis,” this piece explores the “shining shadow”—the mystery that takes place between light and root.
- Sarah Yates

9. There and In Between
This tune was born out of two musical exercises. The first (“There”) came from improvising over Bach. I would play through an étude, take a deep breath and play it again but this time how I thought it should go, how I wanted to play it, or in the case of some of his more difficult études, how I was able play it at the time. The second came from an exercise in time, setting a metronome while I walked to make the metronome my off beats, the “And” in between my steps. Step CLICK step CLICK step CLICK. I repeated this exercise so often it became my mode of transport, physically and mentally as well as one of the inspirations for this piece.
- Sage Romey