Wallmann, Johannes: Love Wins

A lot of albums that arrive here at SoT Towers for review come replete with a story, a reason, a cause, or some deep lying compulsion on the part of the artist that meant they simply had to tell their tale. Few however can truly claim that Love Wins, but with his latest album, piano-composer Johannes Wallmann can undoubtedly boast just that. Wallmann and his husband had been together for 15 years when the pair moved to Madison, for the former to lead the jazz program at the University of Wisconsin. However, due to the laws in that state the pair were viewed no longer as a married couple, but as ‘legal strangers’. Unwilling to accept that their union, which had been joined together in California, was now deemed illegal, the pair agreed to become one of eight plaintiffs in the Wolf v Walker case that led to the federal courts in the Western District of Wisconsin and the Seventh Court of Appeals, to rule Wisconsin’s prohibition on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court let that lower courts’ rulings stand and as such brought marriage equality to not just Wisconsin, but to four other states as well.

And it’s with this backdrop that Love Wins comes to life, and no more so than in “The Seventh Circuit�, where some of the audio from the appeal that the state launched, and lost, is incorporated into a stormy jazz sea where trilling trumpet from Russ Johnson sits atop washes of cymbal and explosions of snare drum. It’s heady stuff and no wonder, with a portion of the legal back and forth tossed up and over as though it sat atop a stormy swell and was holding on for its life. It’s genuinely unusual fare and an unsettling, if compelling listen. More traditional is the opening “Equality!�, where a gentle piano motif from Wallmann and the percussion from Devin Drobka sets the scene for a spoken word lyric from Rob DZ to lay out the album’s tone of acceptance, tolerance and, of course, equality. This quickly runs into the beautiful sprawl of “Preamble� which makes way for the album’s title track, Rob DZ again revealing the message of love over hatred and togetherness over separation. With two female vocalists listed in the credits, I’m not sure whether it’s Sharon Clark or Jan Wheaton who takes up the call to insist that love wins, but whichever of the pair it is, they are magnificent. Musically things are equally skilled, the patience behind “Can I Know (More Love)� something to behold, while “Go On� sits on a deep groove and has its merry way with you, before “We (Will) Love� returns to the album’s central message and once more, a spoken lyric from Rob DZ.

I have to be honest and say that the laid back, if technical jazz and spoken, almost rapped style of much of the vocals on this album reside far from my usual choice of listening. But with the performances so believably captivating, it’s virtually impossible not to get caught up in what Love Wins conveys and the emotions behind it.

Track Listing
1. Equality!
2. Preamble
3. Love Wins
4. We (Reach for) Love
5. The Seventh Circuit
6. Can I Know (More Love)
7. Stonewall Was a Riot
8. Go On
9. We (Will) Love
10. Coda

Added: October 10th 2018
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Johannes Wallmann online
Hits: 1337
Language: english

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