Explorations (1999)

A Decade of Becoming – Korea, Augusta, San Francisco, San Diego

Explorations is a jazz-focused collection capturing Brian Grace’s formative work throughout the 1990s. Though it includes one early piece from 1988 (Korean Morning, recorded at Fort Dix following the U.S. Army Soldier Show), the album primarily documents Brian’s evolving jazz voice—the earliest full expression of the sound he would later refine.

The album blends two professionally recorded studio tracks (Blues for Bob’s Blues and the original 1996 version of Exploration) with a series of deeply personal home-studio recordings made on a Tascam 488 8-track cassette machine. Tracks 4 through 10 were performed entirely by Brian, who played every instrument while mastering the craft of tracking, bouncing, mixing, and arranging - long before the DAW era.

While Exploration appears here in its earliest form, it foreshadows the fully realized Exploración on the Long Beach (2022) EP - a modern re-imagining created with world-class players.

As the first entry in the Early Years trilogy, Explorations represents the jazz side of Brian’s 1990s output. It is followed by Re-Sounding (2000) - a rock/pop collection from the same decade - and Hodgepodge Jazz Garage (2001), which combines three newly recorded jazz tracks (1999–2001) with additional 1990s compositions Brian wanted to preserve in one place.

Explorations remains the earliest full portrait of Brian Grace’s jazz voice- melodic, exploratory, and shaped entirely by hand during a decade of becoming.