Joel Ross - The Parable of the Poet (April 15, 2022 Blue Note)

Vibraphonist and composer Joel Ross returns with stunning conviction on The Parable of the Poet, an expansive album-length suite composed by Ross which marks his 3rd release for Blue Note following his 2019 debut KingMaker and 2020’s Who Are You?. The Parable of the Poet will be released April 15 on vinyl, CD, and digital formats, and is introduced today with the sublime opening movement “PRAYER” which is available to stream or download now.

Steadfast in his commitment to skewing perceptions of improvisation and written composition, Ross explores new territory with his 8-piece Parables band, bringing together young artists of sharply defined expression: Blue Note labelmate Immanuel Wilkins on alto saxophone, Maria Grand on tenor saxophone, Marquis Hill on trumpet, Kalia Vandever on trombone, Sean Mason on piano, Rick Rosato on bass, Craig Weinrib on drums, and special guest Gabrielle Garo on flute.

The album embodies Ross’ collaborative spirit. His lyrical aesthetic activates an ebb and flow from one movement to the next. Moments of intentional discourse drive sections of collective melody and spontaneous counterpoint. “This band is more than just the instruments,” says the Chicago-born, New York City-based artist. “Every person on here means something to me. They’re all my friends. Everybody involved committed themselves to the vision.”

Ross’ vision for the music is at once explicit and mysterious. He seeks to express themes present in parable tellings and retellings, while leaving each story’s particulars open to interpretation. Each title of the 7-movement suite references an emotional decision or experience for Ross. But in the studio he focused on fresh interpretations, allowing his past experiences to exist without dictating the band’s present treatment of the music. “I told them, ‘This is what the music is and this is how I want you to approach it — let everything we play be inspired by the melody.’ Not much else was decided,” says Ross, who enjoys “blurring the lines between melody and improvisation,” in part, as a way to facilitate communication and meaningful musical discourse.

Obscuring divisions between scripted and spontaneous is more than a romantic notion. For Ross, it’s truthful and intrinsic. Each composition he explores on The Parable of the Poet represents a near intact improvisation, some dating back to 2017, all of which emerged during creative sessions with his friend and colleague, saxophonist Sergio Tabanico. “We would record it, then I would go back and flesh out the composition,” he says. “I tried my best not to change any harmonic information or add too much more than what was already there. I just tried to organize the information in a manner that would yield sensible improvised group interaction, while giving enough direction.”

That choice prompts striking moments of deep listening and self-orchestrating among Ross and his fellow artists. The first movement “PRAYER” sets a tone of rumination and collective inquiry. Apart from Ross’ tender solo introduction, the piece exercises restraint. “There’s no one person who’s taking the mic,” says Ross. “Everyone has a moment of playing the theme,” kindling shared navigation and discourse.

1. PRAYER

2. GUILT

3. CHOICES

4. WAIL

5. THE IMPETUS (To Be And Do Better)

6. DOXOLOGY (Hope)

7. BENEDICTION

Joel Ross - Vibraphone

Immanuel Wilkins - Alto Saxophone 

Marquis Hill - Trumpet

Maria Grand - Tenor Saxophone

Kalia Vandever - Trombone

Gabrielle Garo - Flute

Sean Mason - Piano

Rick Rosato - Bass

Craig Weinrib - Drums

JOEL ROSS – 2022 TOUR DATES:

April 8: Annenberg Center – Philadelphia, PA

April 9: Kupferberg Center for the Arts – Flushing, Queens

April 14: Jefferson Center – Roanoke, VA

April 15: Christina Cultural Arts Center – Wilmington, DE

April 16: BlackRock Center for the Arts – Germantown, MD

April 23: Cullen Theater at Wortham Theater Center – Houston, TX

April 24: Duet – Tulsa, OK

May 7: Capitol Bop – Washington, DC

May 8: Creative Alliance – Baltimore, MD

May 10: Robin Hixon Theater – Norfolk, VA

May 13-14: The Jazz Gallery – New York, NY

June 25: The Cube – Detroit, MI

June 28: Victoria Jazz Festival – Victoria, BC

June 29: Vancouver Jazz Festival – Vancouver, BC

June 30: Earshot Jazz Festival – Seattle, WA

July 6-24: European Tour TBA

August 11: The Lodge Room – Los Angeles, CA

August 12: San Jose Jazz Festival – San Jose, CA

August 13-14: Telluride Jazz Festival – Telluride, CO

August 17: Myrna Loy Center – Helena, MT

September 20: Musical Instrument Museum – Phoenix, AZ

September 22: Outpost Performance Space – Albuquerque, NM

September 23: SFJAZZ – San Francisco, CA

September 24: Monterey Jazz Festival – Monterey, CA

September 26: For the Love of Jazz – Reno, NV

October 14: University of Chicago – Chicago, IL

October 16: Wisconsin Union Theater – Madison, WI

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Immanuel Wilkins - The 7th Hand (Blue Note)

If the digital album is purchased, you will receive the full album via email on January 28, 2022.

Standard digital downloads are delivered as MP3 44.1KHZ/24-BIT audio files. 

Please note, digital downloads are only available in the U.S.

Alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins follows-up his acclaimed debut Omega (NY Times Best Jazz Album of 2020) with another striking album featuring his remarkable quartet with Micah Thomas on piano, Daryl Johns on bass, and Kweku Sumbry on drums plus special guest appearances by flutist Elena Pinderhughes and the Farafina Kan Percussion Ensemble

The album consists of an hour-long suite comprised of seven movements that strive to bring the quartet closer to complete vesselhood by the end, where the music would be entirely improvised, channeled collectively. The title is derived from a question steeped in Biblical symbolism: If the number six represents the extent of human possibility, Wilkins wondered how it would sound to invoke divine intervention and allow that seventh element to possess his quartet. “It’s the idea of being a conduit for the music as a higher power that actually influences what we’re playing,” he says.

Tracklist:

1. Emanation

2. Don’t Break

3. Fugitive Ritual, Selah

4. Shadow

5. Witness

6. Lighthouse

7. Lift

Immanuel Wilkins: Alto Saxophone

Micah Thomas: Piano

Daryl Johns: Bass 

Kweku Sumbry: Drums

Hi-Res Digital Disclaimer:

FLAC files do NOT work in iTunes/Apple Music players or on most portable music players without additional software. If you’re unfamiliar with FLAC files we suggest that you download the WAV files instead. More information on FLAC can be found here or here.

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Anton Delecca - The Offering (November 5, 2021 Earshift Music)

Melbourne based saxophonist-composer Anton Delecca makes his Earshift Music debut with The Offering, an emotional yet powerful dedication to the passing of his parents. Recorded in New York City, the album features pianist Caili O’Doherty, drummer Cory Cox, special guest Blue Note artist, alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, alongside Melbourne expat bassist Matt Clohesy. The album bursts with power, groove and passion, paying homage to the memory of his parents who were major supporters of his life in music.

The Offering is the sister album to his award-winning 2013 release The Healer and represents the artistic culmination of living in NYC from 2017-19. Recorded over two freezing days in Brooklyn in December 2019, the album consists of seven original compositions from Delecca along with Barbara by the great Horace Silver, and Skylark, the Hoagy Carmichael classic ballad. “This album represents the spiritual connection and meaning that New York holds for me,” explains Delecca, “much of the music that I have connected to in my life has been made there.” He felt that his musical growth in Melbourne had stagnated. “This album represents the breaking free of some stagnation I was feeling. Living in NY was like coming into the daylight and this recording is the musical representation of that.”

The band consists of some of the best young musicians that New York has to offer. Matt Clohesy played on Anton’s first album released in 2001 and was a fixture in his band for several years. Caili O’Doherty and Delecca undertook their masters together during which time Anton met and played with her husband, drummer Cory Cox. Anton heard Immanuel Wilkins play during a masters recital of a friend at the Juilliard School. Blown away by his playing, and in particular his level of maturity, he asked him to be a part of this recording. “Recording this album was like hanging out with friends whilst making music for two days!” explains Delecca.

This album is the culmination of several years of writing and playing. Some of the material had already been played extensively in Melbourne by his quartet. There’s also a personal element to the album, as Delecca explains, “it is dedicated to the recent passing of both of my parents Marg and Bill. It is in a sense a gift to them both, as they had been major supporters of my life in music from the start.”

Anton Delecca has undergone some personal challenges over the years and music has always been a counterbalance to these. The creation and performing of music is a necessary, life-giving process for Delecca. His sister, who was a musician, studying at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, passed away when he was a child. He was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder in his early 20s which has required ongoing treatment. Through the years he has encountered other challenges including, addiction, the passing of his parents and recently a major operation for bowel cancer.

Anton Delecca has performed with many local and international greats and appeared with his band at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival and the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz among many others. He was also a member of Melbourne funk outfit The Bamboos for 13 years which involved extensive touring and recording commitments.

“The strongest piece for me is the title track, ‘The Healer’……..It is lovely, transporting, spiritual, and has exactly nothing to do with the way much of jazz is played today. Which makes it a truly unique musical experience, beyond genre, as much great music is”

John Hardaker, australianjazz.net

1. Beloved

2. The Offering

3. Invisible Forces

4. Skylark

5. The Flight

6. Barbara

7. The Wooden Bluebird

8. Mother Tongue

9. Promises Promises

Anton Delecca - tenor saxophone

Caili O’Doherty - piano

Matt Clohesy - acoustic bass

Cory Cox - drums

Immanuel Wilkins - alto saxophone tracks 2, 6 & 8

All compositions Anton Delecca except Skylark composed by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, arranged by Anton Delecca

Barbara composed by Horace Silver, arranged by Anton Delecca

Recorded 25th & 26th of November 2019, Big Orange Sheep, Brooklyn NYC

Michael Perez-Cisneros - recording & mastering engineer

Kevin Thomas - assistant engineer

PREORDER

Orrin Evans | "The Magic of Now" | Smoke Sessions Records

Pianist Orrin Evans Boldly Embraces

Challenges and Change to Create Music of

Beauty and Meaning in the Present Time

The Magic of Now Reconnects Evans with

Immanuel Wilkins, Vicente Archer, and Bill Stewart

moke Sessions Records proudly releases The Magic of Now, Orrin Evans’ sixth leader album for the label, and the 20th of the 46-year-old pianist-composer’s luminous career. Recorded in the midst of the upheavals set in motion by the COVID-19 pandemic, this latest recording of Evans’ kaleidoscopic artistic journey coincides with several self-generated sea changes in his life. For one thing, Evans and his wife recently sold their Philadelphia home of 20 years to their oldest son. For another, on March 15th, Evans ended a three-year association with the popular piano trio The Bad Plus to focus on musical projects under his own name.

“People have had to make adjustments and be reborn to a certain extent,” Evans says by way of explaining the title. “We’re past the point where we didn’t know what was going on or what the future would look like. Now we’re settling into what our ‘new normal’ will be, embracing the magic of now and the shape of what will happen next.”

The Magic of Now was recorded at SMOKE during the second weekend of December 2020 by Evans and a multi-generational cohort of A-list partners – first-call New York bassist Vicente Archer; iconic drummer Bill Stewart; and the dynamic 23-year-old alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins. They generate an eight-piece program that exemplifies state-of-the-art modern jazz, including three tunes apiece by the leader and Wilkins (whose 2020 Blue Note debut, Omega, was named “Best Debut Jazz Recording of 2020” by NPR Music and number-one jazz recording of 2020 by the New York Times). From the first note to the last, the quartet, convening as a unit for the first time, displays the cohesion and creative confidence of old friends.

Actually, “old friends” is a precise descriptor for the protagonists. “This album is a reunion,” explains Evans, who met Archer when both moved to New York City during the mid-1990s. He began playing frequently with Stewart when saxophone titan Steve Wilson hired both to play in his Wilsonian Grain quartet in 2008. In 2013, he played “big fun” trio gigs with Archer and Stewart at the Litchfield Jazz Festival and the Detroit Jazz Festival, and used Stewart on his 2014 Smoke Session album Liberation Blues.

Evans initially met Wilkins – a fellow Philadelphia resident – when teaching him at a summer music camp. They first shared the Smoke Jazz Club bandstand in 2018, when Evans to organize a series called “Philly Meets New York.” Their simpatico intensified last summer, as Evans recruited Wilkins to play several self-produced “Club Patio” concerts outside his Philadelphia home.

“I knew Immanuel as a performer and a saxophonist, but not as a composer until I played some of his pieces during that series,” Evans says. “I loved the compositions, how he treated them within a set, and how he put everything together. Playing other people’s music inspires me.”

Producer Paul Stache, who’d personally experienced the Evans-Wilkins simpatico during a Wilkins-led livestream at Smoke last August, suggested the matchup. “I’d wanted to do more with Vicente and Bill after 2013, but they ended up playing with Nicholas Payton for a few years and I couldn’t figure out a way to put it back together,” Evans says. “By happenstance, we were all at home during the pandemic.”

“I love Vicente’s fearlessness,” says Evans, himself known for applying a “kamikaze” attitude to jazz expression since he began leading groups in his late teens. “He learns the music and then adds so much to the conversation by playing harmonic and rhythmic ideas you might not have thought of. And I love the way that Bill’s drums sound – his cymbal choices, the way he tunes his bass drum and snare drum.”

As for Wilkins, Evans appreciates his lovely tone throughout the alto’s registral range; his command of a broad swath of jazz lineage; his “ability to bring music to the table and let it breathe, allowing myself, Vicente and Bill to bring something to it totally different than what his band would do.”

On The Magic of Now, the members apply their collective mojo to three heretofore unrecorded Wilkins songs, including the gorgeous ballad “The Poor Fisherman,” of which Evans (a master of the genre) remarks, “I’ve always wanted to write a ballad like that.” The leader notes the “relaxed” quality that Archer and Stewart impart to the 5/4 time signature that underpins the melody-drenched “Levels,” on which composer and leader engage in probing dialogue before each uncorks a commanding solo. Evans also applauds Wilkins’ “Momma Loves,” analogizing it to “a modern-day Monk tune, or modern-day bebop, with extra bars that make it feel weird – everyone plays right on through it.”

The program opens with a medley of Stewart’s anthemic “Mynah” (which debuted on Stewart’s 1997 Blue Note album, Telepathy) and Mulgrew Miller’s “The Eleventh Hour,” a blues that Evans describes as “a melody that, when you get in there, it’s going to start swinging.” That understates what the unit does on this ferociously executed, up-tempo tour de force, on which Wilkins and Evans refract the language of seminal ’60s modernism into their respective argots, propelled by stalwart beat flow from Archer and Stewart.

The first of Evans’ three tunes is “Libra,” a stick-to-the-ribs melody that previously appeared on Evans’ self-released Luvpark and White Boy, You Don’t Know Nothin’ About No Barbecue. “I wanted to hear what Bill would play,” says Evans, whose intensely percussive solo dances to the “distinctive groove” of Stewart, who played regularly with jazz-funk saxophone legend Maceo Parker during the early ’90s.

Evans dedicated the medium-up swinger “MAT-Matt” – which debuted on Evans’ 1999 album Listen To The Band and was reprised on the 2010 date Faith and Action – to his two sons, now 28 and 23. “It speaks to watching them grow,” he says.

The intensity winds down on the set-closing “Dave,” a pensive ballad on which Stewart showcases his skill at flowing in the rubato space. As on the preceding tunes, where he explores numerous dimensions of piano expression, Evans projects his singular voice onto the 88 keys.

“I love the sound of the piano and drums on this record – and I love the sound at Smoke,” Evans says of The Magic of Now. “I love the energy – so close, so intimate. And I appreciate having a long-standing relationship with Paul Stache that’s built on mutual respect. That has a lot to do with how much I enjoy playing music there.”

1 Mynah / The Eleventh Hour

2 Libra

3 The Poor Fisherman

4 MAT-Matt

5 Levels

6 Momma Loves

7 Dave

PREORDER

Pianist James Francies Returns with New Album "Purest Form" out May 21; Hear the 1st Single "713"

Pianist, producer, and composer James Francies has released “713,” a vivid tribute to his Houston hometown that is the first single from his forthcoming album Purest Form, an expansive opus due out May 21. The album is available for pre-order now on CD and digital formats.

Since his debut album Flight entranced listeners in 2018, Francies has expanded personal explorations of sound bending and orchestral approaches to the music. Collaborations across stylistic realms — including those with Childish Gambino, Pat Metheny, Mark Ronson, The Roots, YEBBA, Chris Potter, Common, Eric Harland, Marcus Miller, DJ Dahi and Ms. Lauryn Hill — have enhanced his development and refined his sound. In issuing Purest Form, his second Blue Note release, Francies accesses intimate chambers of his artistry across 14 tracks, interpreting love, grief, frailty, and fortitude.

The album’s core trio includes Francies’ longtime collaborators Burniss Travis on bass and Jeremy Dutton on drums—three Houston-raised artists who have been playing together and developing alongside one another for more than a decade. Additional musicians featured throughout include his Blue Note labelmates alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and vibraphonist Joel Ross, as well as guitarist Mike Moreno and vocalists Elliott Skinner, Peyton, and Bilal.

Francies’ expression blooms across false borders of genre and style. He nurtures a celestial fascination with melody and texture. “Music, in its purest form, is an honest space we’re trying to get to where there are no preconceived ideas of what we think something should sound like,” he says. “When you really tap into who you are on the inside, musically and as a person, that energy supersedes anything else.”

For Francies, Purest Form is more than a recording. It’s an essence. “I hope that what I was trying to go for — an immersive, multidimensional experience — really reaches people. I hope that for 56 minutes, they step into this world of sounds and textures. That’s the idea. And [laughs] I hope it sounds good on every speaker.”

1. Adoration

2. Levitate

3. Transfiguration

4. Blown Away Feat. Peyton

5. Rose Water Feat. Elliot Skinner

6. My Favorite Things

7. Stratus

8. 713

9. Melting

10. Where We Stand

11. Freedmen’s Town

12. Eyes Wide Shut Feat. Bilal

13. Still Here

14. Oasis

Pre-order