Sill’s new debut, Experiences: Real and Imaginary (available May 10), is a masterfully wrought, panoramic nine-track collection that puts Jung’s ideas into fascinating play. Sill’s signature meld of influences—for starters, think the orchestral compositional ambition (and deft acoustic-guitar touch) of Pat Metheny; the fluidly virtuosic approach to meter and harmony that marks 21st-century postbop; and the fiery, lyrical technique of guitar wizards like Kurt Rosenwinkel and the late Allan Holdsworth, to whom the album is dedicated—will no doubt facilitate a vast range of archetypes and memories in fans. 

This music also reflects its writer’s singular history and vision—as well as a peerless assemblage of primarily L.A.-based musicians, including saxophonists Danny Janklow and Jacob Scesney, trumpeter Mike Cottone, pianists Otmaro Ruiz and Vardan Ovsepian, bassist Benjamin J. Shepherd and drummer Gene Coye. Sill’s mentor and friend Dave Grusin, the legendary keyboardist-composer and a renowned writer of film scores, appears on five tracks and fits the vivid, visual music like a glove. The album was mixed and engineered mostly by Bill Schnee, a personal hero to Sill who mixed one of his favorite albums (and won a GRAMMY® for it), Steely Dan’s Aja. Schnee gives Sill’s project a fantastic sheen—ethereal and open yet crisp and tight; not incidentally, the recorded sound evokes the creative yet commerce-savvy music Grusin shaped at his GRP Records label.  

Written over a half-decade period, the compositions on Experiences: Real and Imaginary include several that reflect on archetypes of American mythology, especially as it relates to Sill’s native Southern California. “The Ballad of James Dean” expresses the solitary nature of this supremely gifted and exceedingly complex icon through Cottone’s noir-soaked trumpet. “Jackie” is another of Sill’s character-driven pieces, an homage to the First Lady’s graceful beauty and her indelible cultural shadow. “Chaparral,” with its hymnal tinges, is a meditation on the distinctive SoCal terrain that has provided picturesque respites for Sill throughout his life. The gorgeous, interlude-like “Chumash Lullaby” takes its name from a Native American tribe that once thrived in and around where Sill grew up in the San Fernando Valley. “To a Theater Near You” is a questing three-part composition that stands as the album’s grand finale; its title can refer to both the Jung-ian idea of mental imagery and the show-business fantasies that Sill’s Los Angeles has exported around the world.