TODD COCHRAN – FROM THE VAULT: NOTES TO THE FUTURE
This episode of Big Blend Radio features musician, composer, and conceptual artist Todd Cochran. The Automatic Man legend talks about his music and new album “From The Vault: Notes For The Future.”
Notes for the future are the “imagined sometime in the past” tropes of a storyteller. Freed from every day “isms” of convention and released from the symbolic containment of the vault, the music is an allegorical exploration in futurism. The stream running throughout the musical narrative is a speculative commentary about our human search for meaning, and we’re reminded that as a version of our ancestors’ vision, this quest never ends.
“From The Vault” is structured around a sequence of recurring themes and develops as an unfolding tour of references, hints, and clues. Moving from one perspective to another, we connect with how our planet is perpetually in a state of seeking solutions. Within the soundscape, without words, an underlying language is speaking. Nature evolves for the sum of us, not the few. We are in a continual state of becoming. We are connected. Love is passed along, as is happiness. Nevertheless, expressly for the listener, an implied sense of reasoning encourages us to feel free and let go of all things familiar. And then, “over there” in the distance, we get a passing glimpse of the sacred structure.
Todd Cochran is an American pianist, composer, keyboardist, electronic musician, and conceptual artist. Early in his career he was also professionally known as Bayeté. Cochran started his career as a teenager with saxophonist John Handy. Two years later he joined vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s Quartet and made his jazz recording debut composing and performing on a benchmark album for Hutcherson, “Head On” (Blue Note Records). Cochran’s first solo project “Worlds Around the Sun” became a #1 jazz album. From the mid-1970s forward Todd has experimented with and incorporated synthesizers, electronic and mixed-media concepts in his creative projects while collaborating with a wide range of artists in the genres of jazz, art rock, pop, R&B, and twenty-first-century classical.
Todd released two albums on Prestige Records in 1972 and 1973. He was keyboardist, principal composer, and lead singer of Automatic Man from 1976–1978 which also featured drummer Michael Shrieve and guitarist Pat Thrall. He was also a member of Fuse One, a coalition of jazz musicians who released two albums on CTI Records in 1980 and 1981. The shortlist of his collaborations includes Peter Gabriel, Joan Armatrading, Maya Angelou and Stewart Copeland.
“From The Vault” is available now through Blue Buddha Productions at https://bluebuddha.bandcamp.com/
More about Todd Cochran’s career and music: http://www.toddcochran.com/
