Disc One: Kirk Knuffke (cornet); Chris Hoffman (cello); William Parker (bass); Chad Taylor (drums, tambourine).
Disc Two: Roksana Kwasnikowska (first violin); Marcin Markowics (second violin); Artur Rozmyslowics (viola); Maciej Mlodawski (cello).
Perhaps surprisingly, for such a long-standing and prodigious soulboy as myself, I’ve had almost no interest in gospel music beyond a few select artists near to the soul music mainstream: Staple Singers, Mighty Clouds of Joy, Rance Allen, Sounds of Blackness and not many more.
I’ve always attributed this to me being an atheist, though I’ve always considered words in music along the lines of acting, and only notice it when it’s either very good or very poor.
Lewis is one of a number of musicians, academics and critics who are seeking to reintegrate the various strands of C20th Black American Music: blues, gospel, jazz and soul (together with less weighty forms: r’n’b, doo-wop, rock and roll and disco, with the jury still out on hip-hop) and reclaim its standing as the great artform of the last century.
The album is in two parts, the first featuring Lewis with the Red Lily Quintet, a standard quintet with tenor and cornet plus cello; and the second with a standard classical string quartet.
The first reminds me I’ve been listening to gospel all along, just like when I listen to jazz I’m also listening to blues and when I listen to soul I’m listening to gospel, blues, rhythm and blues and doo-wop as well. It reminds me of the best in jazz, with the weight of Christian McBride’s New Jawn, through the spirituality of John Coltrane circa A Love Supreme, back to a time when Jazz’s first great horn players: Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster and Roy Eldridge were assimilating the new language of bebop into their playing.
There’s much intricate interplay between all the musicians - and especially the two horns – but also heaps of freedom, disrupting any claim to high art based on formal structures of the European model and establishing alternative paradigms of what constitutes ‘serious’ music, based on characteristics drawn from the black experience though the Civil Rights Movement, slavery and right back to Africa.
On disc two, as if to substantiate any claim to high art, he uses a standard string quartet, but then subverts it by incorporating the very qualities of black music which are typically excluded from definitions of serious music, through the soulful, funky, bluesy, improvisation and spirituality of black music via his saxophone.
I’ve found this album joyous and life-affirming and think I may keep playing it for a very long time. The second disc is of less interest to me but I think could be very rewarding for those who come at jazz from the classical angle. Steve T
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