Description
For Mahalia, With Love - the highly anticipated new album by award-winning tenor saxophonist-composer James Brandon Lewis & his Red Lily Quintet, following on their poll-sweeping Jesup Wagon - reimagines songs made famous by the gospel icon who galvanised a nation with her voice.
Whereas Lewis used his transformative talents to newly illuminate renaissance man George Washington Carver onJesup Wagon, the saxophonist does the same here for gospel-music force of nature Mahalia Jackson. And this time it's personal, because Lewis lived her music growing up, nurtured by a grandmother who had received Mahalia's singing like a bolt from above. Much more than a tribute, this work is"really a three-way conversation between Mahalia, my grandmother and me."
The challenge was to turn these songs into jazz, the 21st century variety. What James and the band [ William Parker-bass, Chad Taylor-drums, Kirk Knuffke-cornet, Chris Hoffman-cello] conjure with this music is miraculous.
* The CD & LP editions also exclusively include the contemporaneous suite, "These Are Soulful Days", JBL's first composition for strings; performed with the Lutoslawski Quartet. It is included as a 2nd disc on CD version & via an exclusive download card with the LP.
