Unmarked Routes remembers walking around on late nights during the Summer, sauntering through the New Hampshire (USA) country side, under a moon-lit sky with the smell of pine trees, cut grass, the sound of a gently babbling book showing up along his path. Occasionally, after returning from what we now call a nature bath, he would come upon a 1am radio show on National Public Radio called, “Music from the Hearts of Space” and become completely transfixed by the wild spaciousness delivered on the sonic vibrations of massive synth pads, beautiful merged string lines, subtle hand-percussion rhythms, perhaps a few spoken word snippets shining through a din of cavernous reverb. The tracks floating out of the radio that had a level of compositional adventure ignited a fire that would later propel Matt into exploring avant-garde classical composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok.

 

Off-stage, Unmarked Routes is composer, pianist, and Berklee College of Music professor Matt Jenson. His musical trajectory has been long and varied: earning a master’s degree in jazz piano, playing deep roots blues, southern rock, and funk, immersing himself in Afro-Cuban traditions, and diving deep into the reggae idiom through the creation of his "Music and Life of Bob Marley" class/ensemble, touring and recording with jazz-fusion reggae outfit Groundation and leading his own Latin and reggae ensembles.

 

This current project marks a radical departure from the middle chapter of his career, or perhaps it’s more like a returning to that simple and organic experience of beauty and the sense of being touched by something deeply universal while wandering through the moon-lit forests and meadows of his childhood.

 

Most assuredly, a successful path through the human and planetary transition taking place will not come from division. Unmarked Routes invites you into a hypnagogic state, the fertile space between wakefulness and sleep, where immense feelings of awe and gratitude delivered on a sonic bed of beauty will remind you that in fact we are not divided.