Christian Sands’ third recording for Mack Avenue Music Group captures and establishes him as a forceful leader in composition and conceptual vision.  On his stunning new album, Be Water, pianist Christian Sands takes inspiration from water’s tranquility and power and muses on the possibilities offered by echoing its fluidity and malleability.  The music is akin to the element which has no form of its own, taking on the structure of whatever musical composition and performance in which it finds itself and is a universal necessity.  For this recording, Sands reunited with bassist Yasushi Nakamura and saxophonist Marcus Strickland, and is joined by trumpeter Sean Jones, trombonist Steve Davis, guitarist Marvin Sewell, and drummer Clarence Penn.

The album takes its title from the philosophy of martial arts master and movie star Bruce Lee (by way of screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, who distilled his thoughts for the screen). Lee’s voice appears on both halves of Sands’ title track offering this profound advice: “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle… Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” (Bruce Lee inspirational quote). The music of Be Water flows with the mesmerizing tranquility and awesome power of its namesake. On his most conceptually ambitious album to date, Christian Sands takes heed of Bruce Lee’s wisdom and truly allows his creativity to transform and assume a dazzling variety of forms.