SOLA GRATIA

“I think Sola Gratia is as good as anything I’ve ever done.” That’s a bold claim by any musician, but it’s an extraordinary one from a singer-songwriter-all-round-musician of the calibre (and extensive back catalog) of Neal Morse, whose reputation as one of the progressive rock world’s most talented and prolific current artists is unparalleled.

Like much of Neal’s music, Sola Gratia originated from a seed planted in his mind, followed much later by a whirlwind of inspiration – and, this time, a little solar power: “A couple of people had suggested to me that I should do a prog concept album based on the apostle Paul, but it wasn’t until I went on a cruise to Australia and New Zealand in January 2020 that I started waking up with a lot of music, and would go up on deck with my keyboard to work on it as the sun came up. By the time I came back from the cruise I was pretty excited about it, and as I worked on it at home, the Sola Gratia album was born.”

The album was recorded ‘virtually’ in April 2020 at the height of the Coronavirus lockdown with long term collaborators Mike Portnoy (drums) and Randy George (bass): “It’s the first album we have ever made remotely: I sent them the basic tracks and asked if they wanted to rearrange things, but they just said ‘No, it’s great!’, so they just played to it and sent their parts back over. It wasn’t an easy way to make an album, but creating always has its challenges, no matter how you do it.” Sola Gratia will be available as a Limited CD+DVD Digipak (including making of documentary), Gatefold 2LP + CD, Standard CD Jewelcase & as Digital Album.

“I think Sola Gratia is as good as anything I’ve ever done.” That’s a bold claim by any musician, but it’s an extraordinary one from a singer-songwriter-all-round-musician of the calibre (and extensive back catalog) of Neal Morse, whose reputation as one of the progressive rock world’s most talented and prolific current artists is unparalleled. Like much of Neal’s music, Sola Gratia originated from a seed planted in his mind, followed much later by a whirlwind of inspiration – and, this time, a little solar power: “

A couple of people had suggested to me that I should do a prog concept album based on the apostle Paul, but it wasn’t until I went on a cruise to Australia and New Zealand in January 2020 that I started waking up with a lot of music, and would go up on deck with my keyboard to work on it as the sun came up. By the time I came back from the cruise I was pretty excited about it, and as I worked on it at home, the Sola Gratia album was born. The album’s name of course has echoes of Morse’s 2007 epic Sola Scriptura, about the life of Martin Luther, but was in fact originally the result of a simple marital misunderstanding: “I was talking to my wife Cherie about debuting this new piece at Morsefest 2020 (Morse’s annual fan convention in Nashville) and she said she thought it would be good for me to do a solo album.

However, I thought she said, ‘Sola album’ and – because some of the new ideas involved Paul’s aggressive pursuit of the early Christians – I could see a link to some of the themes of persecution in Sola Scriptura.” Musically, Sola Gratia also has some Sola Scriptura motifs woven into the continuous musical narrative with Morse’s customary skill and is very much ‘in the wheelhouse’ of his earlier prog albums, such as Sola Scriptura and Question Mark: ”If you like any of those albums then you are really going to love this. I think the themes are wonderful and the playing that everybody brought to it is great.” The album was recorded ‘virtually’ in April 2020 at the height of the Coronavirus lockdown with long term collaborators Mike Portnoy (drums) and Randy George (bass): “It’s the first album we have ever made remotely: I sent them the basic tracks and asked if they wanted to rearrange things, but they just said ‘No, it’s great!’, so they played to it and sent their parts back over. It wasn’t an easy way to make an album, but creating always has its challenges, no matter how you do it.”

As Morse explains, it was this process that decided that Sola Gratia was to be a Neal Morse album, rather than being credited to The Neal Morse Band: “With the Neal Morse Band, the whole band works together on the writing, and while Mike and Randy played bass and drums respectively and Eric Gillette plays some guitar and Bill Hubauer has added some keyboards, none of them were involved in the writing – or are singing – on this album.” Best of all, the story in Sola Gratia ends only at Paul’s conversion, so Morse promises that this may only be part 1… Neal Morse’s Sola Gratia is released by InsideOut Records on September 11th 2020. * * * * * Born in 1960 into a Californian musical family, Neal Morse formed and played in many bands in his youth – learning and mastering several instruments along the way. In 1995, he wrote and recorded with his band Spock’s Beard The Light, an album founded strongly in the then unfashionable progressive rock genre. This album quickly became a modern prog classic and began to bring Neal and the band global recognition.

In 2000 Release-Date: September 11th, 2020 he joined forces with Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), Peter Trewavas (Marillion) and Roine Stolt (The Flower Kings) to form Transatlantic, a ‘prog supergroup’ that won yet more fans across the world. However, in 1998 his daughter Jayda was born with a large hole in her heart, and with the doctors not optimistic of an immediate cure, Neal’s wife Cherie took Jayda to a church meeting, where Jayda was prayed for – and completely healed. This was a major step along the road to Neal’s full conversion to Christianity, and sensing that God now wanted him to take a new direction, Neal shocked the prog world in 2002 by leaving both Spock’s Beard and Transatlantic. Since then, Neal’s solo work has focussed almost entirely on making music with an implicit or explicit Christian message, beginning with 2003’s Testimony and most recently with The Neal Morse Band’s critically and publicly-acclaimed The Similitude Of A Dream (2017) and The Great Adventure (2019) – both interpretations of parts of John Bunyan’s classic allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress – as well as Jesus Christ The Exorcist – his 2019 rock opera based on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Neal’s unceasing creativity has also found an outlet in a series of Christian worship and acoustic albums, some featuring contributions from friends and family, as well as in the pop/prog supergroup Flying Colors, who have recently released their third album “Third Degree”. A lifelong and encyclopaedic Beatles fan, Neal lives near Nashville with his wife and two grown up children, where he also pastors a non-denominational Christian church.