Certificate Recital: Jimmy Waltman, Jazz Voice

from the composer, Jimmy Waltman

The Blossom is a conceptual song cycle that explores seasonality,
growth, memory, spirituality, and the creative process itself. The 10
songs are rooted in the concept of The Blossom, an imagined
endpoint of self-actualization that is never quite manifested, the goal
of self-creation in your own ideal image.

I have increasingly experienced nature as a conduit for emotional
introspection, finding that my mood and the natural world around
me reflect one another. Each song from the album is tied strongly to
the season in which it was written, so that, taken together, the cycle
traverses a year.

We begin in August, reflecting on summer and lost time with “The
Blossom (Resolve).” We move into the nostalgic mood of fall with
the naïve “Sycamores” in September and the saccharine “Analog
Photograph” in October. The heavy weight of winter creeps in on
November’s “Pipeline.” “Orion” explores spirituality and existentialism
in the month of December, while “Utica” belongs to no one month, a
fragmented narrative that I have written and rewritten several times
over the course of 5 years. “Banana Bread” is a sad and grateful
January breakup song. “Pear Moon” is the ambivalent angst of
March. “Rosy” deals with the memory of a past summer and the
perspective of the current spring. And “Scarlet Fire (Resolution)” is
an inevitably anti-climactic conclusion, a mythological tale of
contentment in the absence of a real one.

❀❀❀

THE BLOSSOM (RESOLVE)
I’ve lingered here
long past the petals on the lawn
Stuck like the childhood of a baby fawn.
It doesn’t yet know
what it has waiting outside,
Just frozen in foliage and swaddled in time.
Come and consume my eyes,
Strawberry Moon sunrise.
Stay with me til June, mayfly,
A little more time.
The wineberries shrivel,
July comes to a close.
Like when we were little
and ragweed filled our nose.
We’re both so familiar,
August dissolves into air.
I’m bitter so leave some sea salt in my hair.
Come and consume my eyes,
Strawberry Moon sunrise…
The Blossom’s impatient,
The Blossom is cruel.
It’s manifestation, it’s cloudy gray and cool.
Self-essence is myth,
delusion is heaven and hell.
I’ll talk to my future, find peace with the self.
Come and consume my eyes,
Strawberry Moon sunrise…

SYCAMORES
Breeze kissing us gently,
Trees ready to turn,
Leaves once again rusty,
What have we learned?
Nothing’s fallen yet,
Except the sycamores of course.
They always rush in,
With the cart ahead the horse.
This fall’ll be different.
Cause I’ve seen it before.
I know what to expect
From those old sycamores.
Stream trickles beside us,
Stones under your head.
Deep into the forest
Where no one can see our bed.
Hold me through the sunset.
Join me in the pine.
Swear I’ll keep your secrets
If you listen to mine.
Meet me in the mountains,
Where the goldenrod’s high.
Let’s hang onto Blossoms
As the leaves begin to die.
Lay me down in clover
Cause I’m eager for it all.
Love over and over,
Flower frost and fall.

ANALOG PHOTOGRAPH
Hold it forever, the wildflower path.
Sit by the lake, analog photograph.
Breathe with the branches,
And shimmer like the sky,
Sweet like an apple,
In that instant I could cry.
Sitting criss-cross on the
Frigid blacktop where you
Ate shit and laughed it off.
Let’s climb the lost parking garage.
Sacred so soon,
Red and yellow balloons,
Abandoned tea mugs and ice cream spoons,
They plan our lives in writer’s rooms.
Hold it forever, the wildflower path.
Sit by the lake, analog photograph.
Walking through a painting,
Holding hands with god.
Warblers in the meadow,
Orange brown and goldenrod.
Wilted like the zinnias on
the dashboard of my car.
Let me place a crown of wicker in your hair.
I can’t stick around to see
The fences built around the park.
Teardrops warmer than the
Shower that we shared.
Hold it forever, the wildflower path
Sit by the lake, analog photograph.
Exhale together with every living thing.
Melt with the autumn colors,
Swallow up the spring.

PIPELINE
The sound of a bus engine,
The smell of muddy streams,
The ripples on the surface,
It’s all a sleepless dream.
Why do I crave the lonely?
Sweetgum litter on the ground.
Not much longer can you hold me,
Just until the Snow Moon comes around.
Alone down at the pipeline,
Sitting on a sycamore leaf.
Hopped a fence down by the lakeside,
And it hit me with the singing of the trees.
The trickster, she is a goddess with no gender.
He is your sister, and they’re the rain clouds
in November.
The fungus on the tree trunk,
Sugar never blown away.
Everything right where you left it
Two springs ago, when this was our place.
And if we lived in Hallmark movies,
We’d bake cookies til we die.
I’d never long to be a Lonesome Traveler
On a Desolation Peak in the sky.
Alone down at the pipeline,
Tulip poplar ceiling springs a leak.
Keeping warm under the floodlights,
Gray and brown and brilliantly bleak.
The trickster…
I love you. You caught me crying in the rearview.
We’re bleak and blurry, and I’m terrified, but I’m
not worried.
I love you.
I loved you..

ORION
Crocodile tears in the form of the buds
on the cherry trees,
Mist on the asphalt cause no one
reads Matthew on Christmas Eve.
There was room at the inn.
Joseph ran from his sins.
And left Mary divorced til the angels
decided to intervene.
Kingfisher silenced,
the branches grow brittle and frail.
Lakeside is barren,
he waits to be saved by a Holy Grail.
And he’s got time to think
Til the full moon is pink.
The rivers are empty,
the grasses are frozen and stale.
How many suns in the skin of Orion?
Is it hard to keep your belt from falling down?
Sky is no brighter in Richmond,
But at least it feels like January now.
Walker of waves,
Back from the grave,
Greatness in decay,
There is nothing but the way.
When we retire,
our sins get recycled into a new host.
Cursed by desire to wander this plane
as a hungry ghost.
We’ll return to the dust,
Chasing rivers of pus.
Spend beginningless time
seeking water on some other coast.
Sun doesn’t set in the park on the interstate,
But the water sure looks pretty like this.
Violet and gold in the Palisades,
Orion seems closer from the cliffs.

UTICA
I think I almost heard it,
Lamppost island lakeside hermit.
I could fly there if I weren’t
Here beside the undercurrent.
I’ll take the train to Pittsburgh,
Driving through rain what it’s worth.
We all birth each other
Then we die then we recover then you
Cry cause it’s a long long way to Utica.
Oh when do you feel free?
We’re all equally loved
Equally empty
Equally loved
Equally empty
Pine needles in your apartment,
Grass stains in your faded scarlet hair.
So when do you feel safe?
Epiphany or just escape?
Your mind is like a vacation,
Put the past in conversation.
Like the snowflakes on your lashes,
Watching flowers through your glasses.
Back when we were far away from Utica
Oh when do you feel free?
We’re all equally loved
Equally empty
Equally loved
Equally empty
Back when we were far away
Back when we were far away from Utica

BANANA BREAD
Headlights turn into crosses
In the rearview.
In the passenger seat
Is a shadow of me, navy blue.
Like the river where you live
Where we gave us our first kiss.
I’ll choke on Blossoms in spring
I don’t know anything
Without you.
Cold snap isn’t coming
But I guess I’m welcome to wait.
There’s children face down in a puddle
Where we used to skate.
Days in the snow now don’t come too often.
We’ll never have everlasting autumn.
It still makes me cry,
The silence in our eyes.
Stay with me for a moment
Cause we know that it’s over.
Nothing we haven’t said,
Just the geese overhead in the gray.
And our hands have grown too numb
In the winter where we’re from.
Still it feels like I killed
What took two years to build in a day.
I’ve overstayed my welcome.
Even if you want me to stay.
Cause I feel like Judas eating the
Banana bread you made.
How come I still don’t feel any stronger
Sorry that I couldn’t hold you longer.
It still makes me cry,
See you in the next lifetime.

PEAR MOON
All the pear trees smell like shit.
And there’s earthworms in the moon.
A few white petals and that’s it.
Singing nettles and the cherries soon.
Like the snow on the magnolias,
Can’t the sky leave it alone?
The Blossom’s coming like I told ya,
If it can stand another year of cold.
The Pear Moon blessed the mud
between your toes.
Forsythia and daffodils
and multiflora rose.
Death is like a window in the
ground where nothing grows.
And change is always coming
like the stamens in your nose.
Trying not to slip away to the canal.
Landscape in the surface, everything is new.
Why don’t we call a little more than once a while?
Another mirror seems like something I could use.
I remember what my sister showed me.
It is knowing, it is true.
We project ourselves on two way movie screens.
Just to see another point of view.
The Pear Moon is shifty.
I never could stop you
from blaming yourself.
I hope you don’t miss me.
The flowers seemed alright
without all your help.
So what do you say?
I’ll see you when I’ve got some leaves
on my branches.
I hope that’s ok..

ROSY
I remember living in that dream,
Back when the yellow, blue and brown
was pink and green.
We had the time to let the sunset slowly,
Dwelling back in August feeling rosy.
We told each other we’d never drift apart,
But we’re so far away
from twilight in the park.
The cliff above the river
is awfully quiet as of late.
We hurt each other til we all felt ok.
Grass stained sneakers, cotton candy clouds,
Five year lifetime, I hope we stick around.
And if you’re in the area 20 years from now,
And you feel like remembering,
you know I’m always down.
How did we get so far away?
We feel just like strangers
out of things to say.
But I still go back now and then
to our place between the pines.
And I feel the grass between my toes,
and I look up to the sky.
Grass stained sneakers, cotton candy clouds
Five year lifetime, I hope we stick around.
And if you’re in the area 20 years from now,
And you feel like remembering,
you know I’m always down.

SCARLET FIRE (RESOLUTION)
The shadow crossed the half-way point
on the surface of the moon.
Awakened from his bedridden state
in the dark of afternoon.
Weary of envy and ambition,
A self-fulfilling prophecy and a mission.
He threw the windows open
and stepped out into spring,
Cabbage by the river bed
and life in everything.
Wood thrush in the garden
reminds him what he hopes for,
Pink petals suspended as they
float down to the floor.
Save me scarlet fire, pray I feel inspired,
By the time you flower in the final hour.
At least I can say I tried to be satisfied.
He stepped out on the melted surface of the lake.
Walked until a five-eyed cyclops barred his way.
Poked a plastic pencil through its brain,
It sank beneath the water, down the drain.
Trapped beneath a mirror in a creek,
He fell in love and lingered for a hundred weeks.
The tragedy of freshwater Calypso,
She’s got so much practice letting shit go.
Save me scarlet fire….
He sought resolve in clouds the shape of cotton,
Wayward with his purpose long forgotten.
He found The Tower burning on a hill,
Starbursts of magenta blazing still.
And only like a sunrise in the fog could,
Gleaming like the silver bark of the dogwood,
He walked across the bridge
and took everything in.
He left behind his hunger
and the diamond mind was his.

Jimmy Waltman ‘23 (voice) is a songwriter, composer, and vocalist from Hopewell, NJ. He
will graduate this spring with a degree in Music and certificates in Jazz Performance, Jazz
Studies, and African American Studies. He has studied with Dr. Trineice Robinson-Martin,
Rudresh Mahanthappa, Darcy James Argue, and Kamara Thomas, and he has sung in Jazz
Vocal Collective, Small Group A, and the Creative Large Ensemble. In addition, he leads the
neo-soul band Hot Jupiter and sings in the funk band Gemenon. He released his first album
last summer, a collaboration with two other songwriters entitled Frisbee Nights. In his
songwriting, Jimmy seeks to blend his background in jazz with his passion for lyrical storytelling
and contemporary music styles like pop, R&B, and indie rock. The Blossom is an album of
original music written for Jimmy’s senior thesis project. He recorded the album with the
members of Hot Jupiter, and it will be released on all streaming platforms on May 9th. He is
also the former Music Director of his second family, Old NasSoul, and the former Music Chair
of his second home, Terrace Club. FOOD = LOVE

Gabriel Chalick ‘24 (trumpet) is a junior from Naples, FL majoring in Art History with a minor in
Jazz Performance. When he isn’t giving people the good fortune of being able to hear his
delightfully lush trumpet sound he can be found singing Billy Joel way too loud in the shower,
running around campus blasting techno in his silly little earbuds, or reading Marx outside.
Evan DeTurk ‘23 (alto saxophone) is a saxophonist, composer, and arranger from Seattle,
Washington majoring in Molecular Biology and pursuing a certificate in Jazz Studies. While still
in high school, he performed around the United States and Europe with the renowned Garfield
High School Jazz Band. At Princeton, Evan has studied under David Liebman, Rudresh
Mahanthappa, Darcy James Argue, and Miles Okazaki. He plays in multiple jazz groups as well
as the Triangle Club Pit Orchestra. He also leads the funk band Gemenon and plays saxophone
in the indie neo-soul band Hot Jupiter. His music draws from a diverse set of genres, with his
most recent work combining jazz-style horn writing with live electronic music. He hopes to
pursue a career in biotechnology or scientific research in addition to music. After graduation,
he’ll be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area to work as a technician in the Doudna Lab at UC
Berkeley. He hopes to pursue a career in biotechnology or scientific research in addition to
music.

Isaac Yi ‘24 (tenor saxophone) is a saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger
from Bergen County, New Jersey. He has always had a passion for the arts and draws his
musical and artistic inspirations from various interdisciplinary sources. At Princeton, he is
pursuing a concentration in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a certificate in the Program
in Jazz Studies. At Princeton, he is also involved in multiple jazz, dance, cultural, and sports
groups on campus and has studied music with Rudresh Mahanthappa, Darcy James Argue,
and Ralph Bowen, as well as James Saltzman, Graeme Norris, Jeremy Manasia, and Jon Snell
at the Manhattan School of Music. When not making music, he enjoys dancing, drawing, and
spending time with loved ones.

Adithya Sriram ‘24 (baritone sax) is a saxophonist from Cary, North Carolina majoring in
Operations Research and Financial Engineering with certificates in Finance, Statistics and
Machine Learning, and Jazz Studies. In high school, he was part of the Triangle Youth Jazz
Ensemble, one of the premier high school jazz bands in NC that has repeatedly qualified for
the Essentially Ellington festival in NYC. At Princeton, Adithya is part of Small Group I and the
Creative Large Ensemble and has studied under Rudresh Mahanthappa and Darcy James
Argue as well as Wayne Leechford and Aaron Hill in his hometown. Apart from music, Adithya
enjoys playing tennis with Club Tennis, playing spikeball, watching television, and exploring
different music.

Alexander Moravcsik ’23 (piano) is a senior in the Music Department pursuing a certificate in
Music Performance. While at Princeton, he has studied with Darcy James Argue, Dave
Liebman, Angelica Sanchez, Elio Villafranca-West, Miles Okazaki, and Rudresh Mahanthappa.
Moravcsik also performs with several groups on campus, including Villanelle, Hot Jupiter,
Gemenon, and singer-songwriters Molly Trueman and Kate Short.

Isadora Knutsen ‘25 (guitar) is a sophomore from Brooklyn, New York who intends to major in
Comparative Literature with certificates in Jazz performance and Visual Arts. She is a composer
and multi-instrumentalist who has studied classical piano, cello, oud, and guitar. At Princeton,
she has studied with Angelica Sanchez, Darcy James Argue, Tyondai Braxton, and Miles
Okazaki. She also plays in Small Group Z and has a WPRB radio show called “Do You Really
Wanna Party.”

Simon Rosen ‘22 (bass) is a Brooklyn based musician, who graduated from Princeton with a
concentration in Linguistics and a certificate in Cognitive Science. He plays bass and guitar in
multiple styles from country and folk to jazz and punk. Simon played in the Triangle Pit
Orchestra, Small Group X, and the Jazz Vocal Collective during his time at Princeton and also
was a member of multiple student groups including Hot Jupiter. He now spends his time
fantasizing and focusing on making the softest loud music possible.

Alexander MacArthur ‘25 (drums) is a sophomore from Newton, Massachusetts who plans to
declare a concentration in history with certificates in French language & culture, European
cultural studies, and values & public life. He is a trained jazz drummer and trumpet player, and
has performed in a wide array of events and competitions ranging from the Panama Jazz
Festival to the Mingus Competition. He is also a musical omnivore, and enjoys listening to and
studying everything from early music to dancehall. He currently plays drums for Hot Jupiter
and Gemenon, and studies under Vincent Ector. Outside of his studies, Alex enjoys cooking,
reading, (re) watching films, writing, and playing around the bonfire with his closest friends.