Carnal Echo is French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s term for artistic expression. As such it’s a fitting name for Rachel McCann’s jazz fusion project with McCann on keyboard and vocals, Josh Gray on guitar and vocals, and other artists sitting in.

In Merleau-Ponty’s conception, the world enters an artist through her sensory perception, mixes with her embodied way of understanding, and is expressed back out as an echo of her carnal experience. McCann’s way of understanding the world—along with that of co-writer Gray—infuses the songs of Carnal Echo. From the slow steaminess of ”Every Day I Leave You” to the light-hearted confidence of “Forever I Will Fly,” McCann and Gray’s originals capture the full range of life’s experiences.

McCann comes late to the game, starting up a music career after a quarter-century of teaching the history, theory, philosophy, and design of architecture, where she spent years researching the connection between Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and the experience and making of architecture. Her sensitivity to harmonic layers and her focus on just how to render a phrase, along with Gray’s mastery of tonal texture, make Carnal Echo an experience worth having.

Vocals, Piano / Rachel McCann
Vocals, Guitar / Joshua Gray