James Brandon Lewis Quartet
Transfiguration
(Intakt Records)
★★★★★

TO hear the James Brandon Lewis Quartet is to begin to understand how jazz is founded on tradition and syncretism, yet moves towards a newfoundland of sound in its every co-operative note.

Transfiguration is their latest album, with Lewis’s tenor saxophone in complete concord with Brad Jones‘s resounding bass, Chad Taylor’s array of drums and Aruan Ortiz’s scintillating Cuban piano, every sound a sunrise.

Recorded in Switzerland, the foursome bring the Americas to the heart of Europe with huge sonic meaning. All the compositions are Lewis’s, with Trinity of Creative Self having some tender Ortiz piano, Taylor’s pounding drums and Jones’s echoing bass grounding Lewis’s melodic, imploring horn.

Or there’s the tantalising Swerve, where Ortiz chimes his notes alongside Lewis’s sliding sound patterns; or Black Apollo, full of an unassailable timbral pride. Every Lewis album builds on what came before, creating a growing mountain of new and powerful beauty.

Art Tatum Trio
Jewels in the Treasure Box
(Resonance Records)
★★★★★

AS a delighted Fats Waller once declared when Art Tatum entered the club where he was performing: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I play piano but now God is in the house tonight.”

Jewels in the Treasure Box is a three-CD collection of the Tatum trio playing in the Chicago Blue Note jazz club in August 1953, with guitarist Everett Barksdale and the bassist who made his instrument speak, Slam Stewart.

Tatum’s apex piano hurtles and creams its way through 40 standards with his extraordinary technique and musical comradeship with his trio-mates on tracks like Judy and Stardust, while his rampaging St Louis Blues is like you never heard it before.

Few contest that Tatum was the greatest of the great among jazz pianists, and these sessions are yet more compelling evidence. Just play Humoresque, Dark Eyes, If, or Where or When with all their invention, power and soulfulness, and you will see why.

Kevin Figes
YOU ARE HERE
Jazz Now Records
★★★★

KEVIN FIGES was soprano and alto saxophonist in the Seedbed Orchestra, the “open to all” workshop band of the late Bristolian pianist, Keith Tippett.

After Tippett died in 2020, Figes became musical director of a series of concerts celebrating his life and music. You Are Here arose directly from that tribute, an evocative compendium of tunes associated with him, played by fellow musicians who loved and admired him.

Figes plays with emotive power on his ex-tutor Elton Dean’s Sweet FA, while trumpeter Pete Judge, pianist Jim Blomfield, Figes and trombonist Raphael Clarkson combine vibrantly on Dudu Pukwana’s MRA, as Rhiaan Vosloo’s bass and Tony Orrell’s drums skilfully bed the band down on all numbers.

It’s a fulsome homage to a great British jazzman, going beyond admiration to a potent life of its own, with many moments of unleashed creative inspiration and original musical joy and messaging.