Watercolor Sky
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley May 30, 2024
Artist – Michael Whalen featuring Nancy Rumbel, Michael Manring, Will Ackerman. Mark Isham and Charlie Bisharat.

Distributor:
Released: May 2024
Running Time: 39mins 49secs
Website: https://michaelwhalenmusic.bandcamp.com/album/watercolor-sky?from=discover_page
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Michael Whalen has over his lifetime of composing music for all styles and genres, earned several Emmy’s for his work, as well as garnered an immense fan base. His previous release Our April Tigers saw a change in his style of composition, to a slower more meaningful series of compositions, which was received to high acclaim.
Watercolor Sky his latest and to date, most romantically beautiful body of work, is a significant change of direction and one he considers as his best work; one that is destined to be an Award winner in the 2024 series of Awards.
Whalen attributes the change in his music to his relocation to Jamaica Bay from New York City, where he lives on the water with the beauty of nature at his doorstep. He fell in love with the natural world and the beauty that surrounded him; the colours, the bird life and the magnificent sunsets.
As many things in life do, the album came to be from a session in his studio with bass player Michael Manring. Whalen was playing a series of notes on his keyboard, Manring was adding bass; two talented musicians simply being in the moment and from that was born Watercolor Sky.
As the tracks evolved, with the help of Nancy Rumbel, Michael Manring, Will Ackerman. Mark Isham and Charlie Bisharat, a work of considerable significance was created.
Commencing with the seductive strings of Bisharat on The Endless Summer creates a most delicate and elegant moment in time where returning just for a moment, to the days long gone when life was truly an endless summer, becomes real; but just for a moment. A most beautiful piece.
Jaunty and flamboyant is the title track Watercolor Sky where the many moods and flaming colours of the evening skies over Jamaica Bay, have been captured in shades of music: the many, many brilliant colours of the sky painters in their vibrant evening work delighting in impressing mere mortals.
Dancing in the Wind is perhaps one of the most joyful, delightful songs full of lightness and pure joy. Best absorbed with closed eyes, the visions of dancing leaves, flowers, seed heads, touches deep emotional chords.
From this song the next three tracks form a perfect dreamscape of delicate sound, as Whalen pays tribute to the seasons as they unfold over Jamaica Bay: The Flood at High Tide, The First Frost and the sumptuous The Golden Hour.
Mark Isham on trumpet captures the wide openness of the beach in the winter months in Winter Beach. The sand pure, untouched, the skies grey, broody, the ocean gently lapping the shore, the breeze, fresh, stinging the cheeks with icy nonchalance. Winter Beach is dreamy and the perfect song to draw a remarkable and exceptionally beautiful album to a delicate close.
Over the time he has lived in Jamaica Bay, Whalen has begun to connect with nature in a way he never has before. In a promotion piece he said that creating Watercolor Sky was his way of giving back something precious that he has been given.
Watercolor Sky is an outstanding work composed by Michael Whalen and bought to life by Nancy Rumbel, Michael Manring, Will Ackerman. Mark Isham and Charlie Bisharat.