James Brandon Lewis Quartet (US)
Tenor saxophonist and composer James Brandon Lewis (b. 1983) has visited Finland on three occasions with three different ensembles, most recently in Helsinki and Tampere as a fourth, extra member of postpunk band, Messthetics.
However, the timing of his performances has perhaps not been as ideal in the past, at least with regard to personal accomplishments and acclaim. Lewis, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, defended his doctoral dissertation in April and won DownBeat magazine’s traditional international Critics Poll in August. He was named Artist of the Year and Tenor Saxophonist of the Year, both the first time during his career.
The fifth and latest album recorded by Lewis’ quartet, Abstraction Is Deliverance did not make it in time for the poll, as it was not released until the end of this past May. But, maybe the album will place well in the poll next year, as it was given a five star review in the same August issue of DownBeat – the only rating of its kind in the whole magazine.
Praise and poll rankings are just the icing on the cake, but Lewis’ rise to such a high international standing has still been a rapid one, as he did not switch from gospel to jazz until 2012 or release his first actual jazz album until the age of thirty in 2014. Since then, the ensembles and albums have come one after the other at such a pace that Lewis has more than a dozen or, depending on how you count them, nearly twenty releases to his name. And then there is his mysterious live album, Say What (2022), which was released by Helsinki-based We Jazz Records without any background information. Lewis can certainly pop up in the least expected places.
Of course, Lewis also knows how to surprise right up front, including with this longer-term ensemble, whose latest album takes the listener back to the music of the late 1960s, John Coltrane, one of the greatest influencers of aspiring saxophonists and one of Lewis’ idols, had just died. The ballad-heavy Abstraction Is Deliverance is actually a deeply spiritual album for saxophonists and of saxophonists: from Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane to Davis S. Ware, to whom the first track on the album, Ware, is naturally dedicated.
