Voted Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist in the 2020 Down Beat Magazine International Critic’s Poll, James Brandon Lewis supercharges his remarkable evolution on the New York jazz scene with Jesup Wagon, a brilliant and evocative appreciation of the life and legacy of turn-of-the-19th century African-American renaissance man George Washington Carver. The album, to be released on TAO Forms on May 7, 2021, consists of seven pieces that taken together create a portrait of stunning clarity and depth.

There is so much special about this recording, James’ eighth, starting with the lavish artwork, including a reproduction on the cover of Carver’s own tantalizing drawing of the Jesup Agricultural Wagon, which is shown in a photograph on the rear cover, rendering a dialogue of representation and abstraction that Lewis models in the music. And while liner notes are generally more relied upon than celebrated, Jesup Wagon’s are delivered by the great UCLA American historian Robin D.G. Kelley, who in 2009 released the definitive Thelonious Monk biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. His notes, printed lovingly on an ochre background, contain much historical detail about Carver, particularly as they relate to the tunes. The fact that Kelley was willing to write them tells you something about the power of the music on the album, which Kelley calls “a revelation.” 

If “revelation” is a word commonly used to describe master saxophonists like John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders and Dewey Redman, then it fits easily in the horn of James Brandon Lewis, who is a keen student of those and many other elders. But while boundless energy characterizes his playing, it is also grounded by a deep sense of narrative, which is why he is attracted to histories, like Carver’s, or to theories like his own Molecular Systematic Music, used on his superb previous 2020 Intakt album, Molecular, or to artistic genres such as surrealism, modeled by Lewis on An UnRuly Manifesto from 2019.

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LABEL: TAO Forms

ALBUM: Jesup Wagon

RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2021

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