Jimmy Farace/Photo: Faith Decker
Hours fly,
Flowers die
New days,
New ways,
Pass by.
Love stays.
This is the first verse of the poem, “For Katrina’s Sun-Dial.” Written by Henry Van Dyke in 1904, its list of admirers includes Mark Twain, Helen Keller and Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, who had it read at her funeral. It also inspired jazz artist Jimmy Farace, who composed and created an entire album based on the poem.
“I read the poem when I was in college, and it really resonated with me,“ Farace says. “One of its themes, the theme of nostalgia, continued to grow even stronger recently. It started off as just a tune, ‘Hours Fly Flowers Die,'” Farace continues. “But as I kept writing music, I kept coming back to that theme. So after more time passed (‘hours fly’), I thought about putting together this collection of tunes under that umbrella of the entire poem because I thought that they all matched that sort of thesis or theme.”
A native of St. Charles, Illinois, Farace was granted a scholarship at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and later earned a masters in music from DePaul University. While still at DePaul, Farace and two other students formed Trio Profondo, which released the recording “Mosaic” in 2023. The recording gained critical acclaim, primarily because of the evident influence and nod to many of the jazz greats.
“There is a great jazz pedagogy out there, people like Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Bill Evans, people I have been listening to and studying for maybe not as long as some because of my age, but very intensely,” Farace says.
In putting together this album, Farace is bringing forth another jazz tradition, only in reverse. During the beatnik era, many writers and poets used jazz— particularly the atomic energy of bebop and artists like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie—as an inspiration. This is easily detected in Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road,” which was written almost entirely in one long, free-flowing eruption. The compositions of pianist Lennie Tristano, recorded during the early 1950s, eschewed almost all of the elements of traditional jazz, as songs like “Turkish Mambo” poured out in a mad flurry of cascading notes played in off 5/8 or 5/4 time sequences. Poets like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti incorporated this attitude in their poems, which deviated from traditional meter and structure and railed against postwar American society.
Farace eschews much of the frenetic energy of bebop and beats, instead delving into the contradiction between the ever-moving concept of time versus the enduring theme of eternal love. In “Katrina’s Sun Dial,” this is reinforced in the poem’s second and final verse using the more traditional poetic devices of repetition and consonant alliteration.
Time is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is not.
Unlike songs written with words or lyrics that can easily mimic the vocabulary of a poem, Farace had a more daunting task—projecting these thoughts and feelings through music alone.
“There are many ways to do it compositionally, but first I started out with the feeling of nostalgia and reflection, which to me is interesting,” Farace says. “I also thought about encapsulating the contradiction that is set up between flowers dying, which is negative, and love staying, which is positive, and capturing that sort of feeling in the harmony. The harmony in the song is shifting a lot. It starts off in major, which is kind of pretty, and switches to minor, and oscillates back and forth between the two that sets up a kind of battle.
“I also used the ostinato, which is a repetitive phrase—in this case it was the guitar—that I saw as almost like the clock ticking. It keeps pressing forward, but then the song opens up into the bridge, which uses bigger, open chords, and then all the instruments come together for a second. And that to me is like love, staying, almost like conquering that passage of time.”
Jimmy Farace/Photo: Faith Decker
The recording is a combination of emotions projected through Farace’s baritone saxophone. The title song features the aforementioned guitar of Kenny Reichert. The work of The Kaia String Quartet is highlighted on the cut “Growing Pains,” as the violins give the song a somber and reflective tone, like looking into a pond after a rainstorm. Farace’s original, “Ferson Creek” has a classical tone, while “Prophetic Dreams” ventures into avant-garde territory with counter melodic phrasing and crashing piano chords by Julius Tucker.
The group’s covers of Kurt Weill’s “My Ship” and Duke Ellington’s “A Single Petal of A Rose” give the recording both a romantic and nostalgic touch, as both songs were written decades ago. This helps to cement the tie between time passing, which can often be melancholy, and the enduring nature of love.
“I often reflect on the theme of nostalgia and the passing of time, and I thought this poem encapsulates it perfectly, right from the title, which I think is stunning,” Farace says. “But if you read the poem’s two verses—yes, it has its dark spots—’hours fly, flowers die,’ but then it goes onto ‘new ways, new days, love stays,’ so there is a strong message of positivity to it, that love will withstand the passage of time.”
The Jimmy Farace Trio will be appearing at Space at 1243 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, on August 25. Tickets are $12-$22 plus fees, available at evanstonspace.com.
