“It was really like a permission slip to do what I wanted, to play what I wanted, and not to worry so much about style, genre,” Younger said.
That sense of an unbounded aesthetic hangs over “Gadabout Season.” And while certain moments — such as the opening track, “Reckoning,” with its meditative bass drone and shimmering glissandi — do hark back to Coltrane, the album is unmistakably a current statement, and an expression of the full breadth of Younger’s artistry. Her intent, she said, was to push beyond the instrument’s clichéd associations.
“People always associate it with, like, ethereal,” she said, adopting a mock-dreamy tone and rolling her eyes. “But no, I think that the harp has much more depth and range than people think.” She cited “Breaking Point,” a track where she plays in an aggressive and fractured mode. “There’s nothing ethereal about that.”
Younger has often honored her heroes explicitly, covering Ashby on her 2023 LP “Brand New Life” and participating in the various Coltrane tributes. On “Gadabout Season,” though, despite playing Coltrane’s harp, she’s privileging her own personality, shifting from, as Carter put it, “literal tribute to conceptual tribute.”
“I had to find my voice on it,” Younger said. She communed with the Coltrane harp, practicing on it daily in preparation to record.
While growing up, she said that the snobbish attitude she encountered in harp circles that “if it’s not classical, it’s not serious” gave her pause. But now she’s simply playing what feels right, and setting what seems like a healthy example for those enthusiastic 20-year-old girls finding their way to her shows.
“I ain’t got those ego issues,” she said of her current mind-set. “I just want you to enjoy it.”
