Mana is the International Anthem debut by trombonist and composer Kalia Vandever.
The collection carries the spirit of their first solo album, We Fell In Turn, while entering a new landscape of spacious songwriting. Mana, which in Hawaiian means “foundational, supernatural, or divine power and strength,” reveals more of their voice and words, drawing from yearning, loss, and bewilderment.
Vandever’s music has quickly and widely gained traction in the last few years despite the fact that their style has been consistently difficult to pin down, boasting a compositional scope ranging from the palatial modern jazz of their quartet work to the synthetic, gauze-like droning ambience of their solo material.
Mana leans into the expansion of the latter: solo trombone filtered through a well-dialed pedalboard, manipulated live; spare piano à la the late-career work of Ryuichi Sakamoto; electroacoustic interplay simultaneously echoing and transforming the long-note melodicism of Vandever’s melancholic brass work; head-on, unambiguous, and deeply personal lyricism—a particularly fresh move for the composer…
Appropriate for the early riser’s first step into the day or the night owl’s weary and quiet walk home.