I’m proud to announce my second solo album 恋愛至上主義, on Adhyâropa Records:

The starting point for the album is 恋愛至上主義 (renaishijoushugi), a concept which Alexander first encountered in the Japanese television drama 「恋せぬふたり」(“Koisenu Futari”), a show that radically examines consent in relationships. 恋愛至上主義 translates in English to “love supremacism” (which includes perhaps an unintended allusion to John Coltrane). It refers to a pervasive social system in which romantic relationships are valued more highly than other types of human care or experience. Of course, these types of relationships are important for many people, but they may not be for others, and they are not the only valid way to structure one’s life. Though particularly repressive for those who do not fit into its relationship models, love supremacism affects us all. For example, many people who are in romantic relationships may not adequately prioritize their needs for friendship and other support.

Alexander had long noticed the outsize number of jazz standards written from a love-supremacist mindset. Particularly, many earlier standards that were written for musical theater epitomize 20th century US capitalist culture’s exploitation of romance for capital benefit. For this project, Alexander focused on selecting jazz standards, all of them old love songs, that he had had a hard time personally resonating with, often due to their saccharine treatment of love. The first of these “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” took on new meaning for him during the unprecedented monotony of the global COVID-19 epidemic. He continued arranging each piece to celebrate or reflect upon a type of non-romantic human care, ranging from familial love to friendship to metta, a Buddhist concept of loving kindness. The resulting arrangements dissect each piece, bringing out unexpected moments and new life from these old compositions.

Recorded by 11-time Grammy-winner Jack Renner in 2016, Portraits Drawn Without You is my first solo album. It features a set of original compositions that I dedicated to my grandmother following her passing in 2015. These deeply personal songs draw from my own life experiences as well as interrogations of historical memory. Each piece is a sort of musical portrait, an act of representation in which the true subject is conspicuously absent. The end effect, I hope, is like that of walking through the halls of a portrait gallery: You know that the figures on the walls know each other, but it is up to you to figure out the story of how.

Alexander Dubovoy (piano/voice/composer), Jack Renner (recording engineer), Barbara Renner (piano technician), Hans Bilger (post-production), Annelia Leinbach (artwork)

Softie

Check out this single by Newspeak (Eli Brown, trumpet, Hans Bilger, bass, Griffin Brown, drums, and myself, piano). "Softie" is an original composition inspired by a ceramic piece by Kenneth Price.

Alexander Dubovoy (piano), Hans Bilger (bass), Eli Brown (trumpet), Harvey Xia (sax), Emma Akrawi (voice), Jack Renner (recording), Annelisa Leinbach (artwork)

Recorded by Jack Renner in 2014, Machinery of Night is my first album in collaboration with the band Newspeak. Without a drummer, Newspeak has opted for an intimate and interactive style, blending complicated arrangements with a variety of genres. The ever-changing band plays through songs drawn from Nirvana and Elliott Smith as well as the jazz songbook and even Yiddish folk music. Underlying all these influence is a deep sense of spontaneity, which inspired the band to publish the album direct from performance to disk.

Machinery of Night is available on iTunes