Jon Albrink

Biography

Jon Albrink is a New York City-based singer/songwriter/guitarist/bassist.

As a jazz bassist he performed with such notables as Mary Lou Williams, Milt Jackson and Buddy Rich. He has collaborated on songs which have beens hits in Brazil ("The Way I Feel") and Australia ("Hand on Your Heart.")

Jon's first CD, "Shimmer and Thrum," was released in 1999. Here are some comments about this music:

"This is a great album. This guy can write a song."
Bill Champlin, legendary musician/songwriter/lead vocalist with CHICAGO

"Jon Albrink wields a formidable weapon. He has a sharp command of melody and his burr-edged voice matches each melodic turn with precision."
Acoustic Live Online (www.acousticlive.com)

Jon performs regularly in New York at such venues as The Living Room and The Bittter End. He attends the Monday night meetings of The Songwriters' Exchange "as often as I can."

For more info on Jon, please visit his website: www.jonalbrink.com

Comments about 'The Beauty Of The Day':

My reactions to the events of September 11 did not exactly arrange themselves into song form. Even four months later, I didn't feel like writing about it. Like many people, I was wrung out.

I kept returning to one thing. That day was rare and beautiful, a perfect day. If not for the unfolding horror, it seemed destined to be forgettable, a lazy, late summer day. Walking around that afternoon, in my neighborhood a safe mile-and-a-half from ground zero, the events seemed not to fit with the blue sky, the balmy sunshine. This incongruity led me to the first few lines of "The Beauty of the Day." If I were to give it a long title, in the manner of the ancient Chinese poets, it would be "Early one morning on a beautiful late summer day, I wander in lower Manhattan and ponder the unimaginable."

Once begun, the song came rather quickly. At one point, I was trying to think of flying things for the third verse- birds, planes, blimps, bats - when I looked out my seventh story kitchen window and saw a red balloon float by. Red, I swear to God. I'm not given to finding meaning in such things, but I was very happy to have seen it. If it was a hint to put a balloon in the song, I didn't take it.
- Jon Albrink

A beautiful gentle song that asks the question: what if it never happened?
- Suzanne Vega

'The Beauty Of The Day'

[ mp3 sound clip ]

The beauty of the day
A simple fact of grace
An end-of-summer day
She offers up her face
Prepares to take her place
With nameless lovely days

The beauty of the day
The message yet unplayed
The writing on the wall
Still hidden in the shade
Arrangements have been made
The journey has begun

But for now there's just the sun
Two rivers and the sea
Gentle arc of birds
Falling swift and free
Falling swift and free
Falling swift and free

Something like a bird
Something like a plane
The tiniest of sounds
Becomes a hurricane
And everyone will say
It all began that way

But for now there's just a hum
That might become a roar
Then slowly fade away
To what we had before
What we had before
What we had before
The beauty of the day