We Begin is a collaborative album by the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 musicians Mark Isham

Mark Isham

Mark Isham is an American trumpeter, synthesist, and film composer. He works in a variety of genres, including jazz, electronic, and film.-Life and career:...

 and Art Lande

Art Lande

Art Lande is a jazz pianist, drummer, composer and educator.Born in New York City, he began piano at age 4, studied at Williams College, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1969. He made the first record of his own compositions in 1973 for ECM Records, in a duo with saxophonist/flutist Jan...

. It is a highly experimental album featuring a wide range of compositional styles.

The first track on the album is a piece titled “The Melancholy of Departure

The Melancholy of Departure

The Melancholy of Departure is a painting by the Greek-Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. This painting was created after de Chirico returned to Italy from Paris to join the Italian Army in World War I....

”. It consists of a soft and mournful trumpet melody set against a harsh and almost mechanical rhythm. “The Melancholy of Departure” takes its title from a 1916 work by the Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 metaphysical painter

Metaphysical art

Metaphysical art , style of painting that flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920 in the works of the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began with Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious quality...

 Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...

.

The two most experimental tracks on the album are “Ceremony in Starlight” and “Surface and Symbol”. “Ceremony in Starlight” is an eerie avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 composition with muted trumpet, piano and synthesized

Synthesizer

A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

 bells. “Surface and Symbol” is a complex arrangement of looped

Tape loop

In music, tape loops are loops of prerecorded magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound. Contemporary composers such as Steve Reich and Karlheinz Stockhausen used tape loops to create phase patterns and rhythms...

 trumpet, piano and percussion with synthesizer accompaniments.

Track listing

1. ”The Melancholy of Departure” (Isham) – 6:32
2. ”Ceremony in Starlight” (Isham) – 7:34
3. ”We Begin” (Lande) – 6:19
4. ”Lord Ananea” (Lande) – 2:42
5. ”Surface and Symbol” (Isham, Lande) – 10:45
6. ”Sweet Circle” (Lande) – 4:09
7. ”Fanfare” (Lande) – 3:26

Personnel

• Mark Isham – trumpet, fluegelhorn, piccolo trumpet
  Piccolo trumpet
  The smallest of the trumpet family is the piccolo trumpet, pitched one octave higher than the standard B trumpet. Most piccolo trumpets are built to play in either B or A, using a separate leadpipe for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B...
  
  , synthesizer, percussion
• Art Lande – piano, synthesizer, percussion