Christian Dillingham - Halcyon

Like the notes he plays, Christian Dillingham chooses his words with care and with precision. The word halcyon, he reminds us, describes “a period in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.” Implicit is the breeze of nostalgia, which carries a whiff of regret: such days do belong to the past. Implicit, too, is the idea of refuge.

Originally, the term “halcyon days” referred to the weeklong period each year when the Greek god Aeolus was said to have calmed the winds and quieted the world for his daughter Alycone (Halcyon). The fact that Dillingham’s own family plays so prominent a role in this repertoire, in compositions directly inspired by them, may not have been intentional. But it does seem more than coincidental.

He indeed spent much of the time leading up to this album in contemplation of halcyon days. The death of his father, in September 2023 — coupled with the release of his first album just weeks later, and a slate of performance commitments — set him adrift on an emotional sea. He navigated it, in part, by leaning on his wife (“the rock of our family,” honored in “Dimepiece”) and his own children; by recalling conversations with his dad; by writing many of these songs. They shape the soul of this recording, not by sloshing in the past, but by mapping the present from a changed perspective.

Dillingham works in jazz groups throughout Chicago but he also performs with a half-dozen classical ensembles, and his classical training (like that of Julius Tucker) threads itself throughout Halcyon. It sometimes even vies with the blues, the bedrock for so much music of our time — the prism for essential expression, erasing castes and divisions, portraying dark times or celebrating the light that beckons.

Dillingham says, “The combination of nostalgia and blues represents the culmination of my family’s experience last fall,” and the spirit of the blues pervades this music to a degree not previously heard in the bassist’s bands. It inhabits Matt Gold’s tender guitar, now searing, now tender, on the title track and “Sinclair’s Struggle” in particular. The blues even color a Songbook classic by Irving Berlin, never considered a blues guy, to reshape it as a country-western waltz, akin in sound and spirit with the Bob Dylan sachet that closes the album.

“Twice Lost” will haunt me for months. Dillingham’s father almost died the previous year, and the piece shimmers with the pain and acceptance of two such reckonings. The disquieting nebulae of “Peace Awaits” catch my breath with every listen. It conveys the restless thrash of emotional upheaval. And when it resolves, you may feel the weight lift from your own shoulders, readying you for the upturned smile of the children’s song that follows (“Eleanor Jean” being adapted, in fact, from a melody hummed by Dillingham’s eldest child.)

These songs slot together to tell a wordless story, and these renditions — employing Tucker’s enormity of concept, Gold’s chameleonic sensitivity, and Quin Kirchner’s cinematic scenic design — magnify each chapter. With or without their real-life context, they trace a journey: a latter-day odyssey through the groves and warrens of emotions and memories. They form a travelog of resilience and growth.

That this journey transpires internally makes it no less thrilling, and no less picturesque, than the globetrotting adventures undertaken by the mythical Odysseus in his effort to return home — to his halcyon refuge — as recounted by Homer. It's fitting that Dillingham has filled this narrative with equally persuasive poetry.