Kirk Knuffke / James Brandon Lewis / Christopher Hoffman / William Parker / Chad Taylor
August 8, 2021Jesup Wagon
TAO Forms TAO 05
Expanding his creative reach as he augments his musical associates, New York tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis’ Jesup Wagon is a mediation and amplification of the work of US post-bellum botanist George Washington Carver (1864-1943). Although best known as the agricultural scientist who developed hundreds of uses for the peanut, Carver was also an artist and musician. Except for Lewis’ recitation of a couple of his own concise poems, the seven-track homage is all instrumental. Other members of the Red Lily Quintet are cornetist Kirk Knuffke, who plays with Jeff Lederer; cellist Chris Hoffman who has worked with Henry Threadgill and drummer Chad Taylor and bassist William Parker, who have been associated with multiple innovative improvisers.
Except for tracks when the bassist creates guitar-like strums from his gimbri and the drummer’s mbira clanks shape another’s tune’s exposition, the two create fluid rhythms. Taylor’s positioned cymbal clashes and drum top resonation propel without weightiness. Otherwise he enlivens Knuffke’s horizontal voicing with sly junkeroo-style percussion refractions. Usually doubling rhythmic low pulses with Parker, Hoffman maintains a commanding double-bass-like pulse when the bassist switches to thumb piano.
Unafraid to mix idioms, Lewis’ composition evolve in a unique manner. The title tune, for instance unites walking bass, saxophone scoops and brass smears into a mélange that encompasses march time, Hard Bop and intimations of a Stephen Foster parlor song. “Fallen Flowers” is almost the opposite. Processional and then sped-up to adagio, the piece throbs with string whizzes, percussion clunks and reflective horn vamps which climax in accelerating polyphony with reed flattement and plunger trumpet completing the narrative. Ballad inferences with Knuffke’s half-valve squeaks or smooth obbligatos come into play elsewhere as do triple tongued flutters and brawling slurs from Lewis. But the suite’s multi-faceted culmination arrives with the haunting final track. Played in double counterpoint by the saxophonist and cornetist, the bouncy exposition alternates with “Lonely Woman” quotes. Suggesting the scientist’s links to modernism as well as the tradition, quiet mouthpiece brass buzzes alternate with reed snorts and snarls until they, with drum slaps below them, fragment and then reconstitute into a melancholy finale preceding Lewis’ concluding cinquain.
Constantly growing musically, this CD shows that Lewis’ projects are growing in significance.
–Ken Waxman
Track Listing: 1. Jesup Wagon 2. Lowlands of Sorrow^ 3. Arachis 4. Fallen Flowers 5. Experiment Station 6. Seer* 7. Chemurgy^
Personnel: Kirk Knuffke (cornet); James Brandon Lewis (tenor saxophone); Chris Hoffman (cello); William Parker (bass, gimbri^) and Chad Taylor (drums, mbira*)