Tenor saxophonist and composer James Brandon Lewis is one of the most productive musicians in creative music. His quartet, with a traditional piano, bass, and drums rhythm section, releases an album almost every year, and he has two standout guest releases with the Messthetics, a DC-based punk jazz trio featuring guitarist Anthony Pirog.
Lewis’ most idiosyncratic and daring band, however, has been his Red Lily group. This quintet tackled music inspired by the story of George Washington Carver on Jesup Wagon (2021) and music associated with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson on For Mahalia with Love (2023). Now, the band have expanded with the addition of a violin to address the musical legacy of Czech composer Antonín Dvořák in America.
Dvořák visited and lived in the United States between 1892 and 1895, where he composed (and premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York) his Symphony No. 9 in E minor, the “New World Symphony”. While directing the US National Conservatory, the composer hired Harry T. Burleigh, an African-American student. Dvořák famously predicted that American composers could create original American music only by turning to the folk melodies of Black and Native Americans, just as he had used folk music from his home. The “New World Symphony” reflected some of the practice he was recommending.
When bass player William Parker got James Brandon Lewis involved in (and composing for) the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater Company, he learned that the Dvořák legacy traced back through Duke Ellington and Leonard Bernstein. Now James Brandon Lewis and the Red Lily band join the legacy, too.
The nine compositions recorded for Calling Antonín reflect Dvořák’s inspiration but are Lewis originals. They don’t sound like European “classical” music, despite the three string players. Yes, violinist Melanie Dyer sometimes works in a small ensemble for cellist Tomeka Reid, but the energy on nearly every performance channels the combination of jazz improvisation/conversation, polyrhythm, and American folk forms that Red Lily expressed on its first two albums. Indeed, this album seems to express Lewis’ connection to artists such as Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane even more fully.
“I Want Jesus to Walk With Me”, for example, channels Coltrane in many respects. It is built on a spiritual, with Lewis’ lead horn stating the melody above a tumbling accompaniment from the rest of the band. The tenor saxophone lays out the gospel melody, evoking the band’s last release, and then Lewis flies away from the written theme. Drummer Chad Taylor never sets a straight tempo; the strings improvise lines, drone, and grumbling bass notes; and Kirk Knuffke improvises loose cornet counterpoint. It is somewhat like a miniature version of Trane’s Ascension, kept to a tight five minutes.
For a more approachable sense of freedom, the ambling 6/8 time of “Dilemma of the Hearts” evokes Mingus a bit. The tune’s harmonic structure is kept simple at first—just a couple of chords toggling as Taylor keeps groove time, bassist Joshua Abrams plays the single change, and violin and cornet play an ensemble figure. When Knuffke plays the first solo, he sounds like Mingus’s favorite brass players, who knew how to be both Ellingtonian and modern at the same time. The rhythm section cracks open a little, and even more as Lewis solos in his more Albert Ayler (or if you prefer the Mingus association, George Adams) bag, but in the end this tune is also every bit a “jazz” performance, with its feet on the ground somewhere between 1960 and 1975.
The notion that James Brandon Lewis and the Red Lily Band also draw inspiration from Dvořák’s more formal or “classical” side is supported as well. “Spirit of the Living God”, for example, begins the album with the violin, cello, and bass bowing as a section along with both horns in common time. The group doesn’t quite sound like a chamber music ensemble—the sonority, particularly, of Knuffke’s cornet is too personal—but the music is through-composed for two full minutes before bass and drums begin a triple-meter groove, and Knuffke starts improvising. Violin and saxophone solos follow in turn before the quasi-chamber sound returns. Thus, the group begin by evoking both jazz form (theme, improvised solos, theme) and a hint of classical practice.
The title track, “Calling Antonín”, also begins with the strings as a chamber ensemble in 4/4 as Lewis introduces a melody. This short introduction leads to Abrams and Taylor breaking into a 5/4 groove bass/drum as tenor saxophone and cornet trade the melody back and forth in counterpoint. When the violin and cello re-enter, they add harmonic padding, as a guitar or piano might. Mainly, the track is a rollicking good time: bouncing, dancing, bright, and happy. This band will mix methods, but it’s all in service of music you can relate to.
Among the appealing elements that Lewis adds to these arrangements is a layer of wordless singing on “Ode to P.L.D.” Harmonized voices state a rising three-note theme, with the horns playing a playful counter-melody. The band shifts to a yearning second theme that includes horns and strings, before bringing back the opening melodic idea.
It is a gorgeous pairing, and it sets up perhaps the most extraordinary moment on Calling Antonín: an extremely melodic, controlled collective improvisation in which all six members invent simultaneously, yet create a whole of pure harmony. The track fades, and Lewis adds the closing lines to the poem “The Colored Soldiers” (about Black soldiers who fought against slavery in the US Civil War) by Paul Laurence Dunbar, the tune’s dedicatee.
What’s most appealing about James Brandon Lewis’ music, whatever form it takes, is his big heart on display. With the quartet, he works in a classic form, daring you to compare him to Coltrane, David Murray, or David S. Ware, but ultimately just being himself. When he joins the Messthetics, he doesn’t flinch at being the “jazz guy” with a punk-ish band coming from a different angle and place. With Red Lily, Lewis puts himself at the center of a circus of musical acrobats, sharing the stage with grace.
The big Lewis heart is all over Calling Antonín. “Dilemma of Hearts” and “Lento” are both feel-good triple-meter grooves that pop or sway back and forth. Lewis’ solos are wild, happy things. “Going Home” is built on a rock-solid bass line and a New Orleans-tinged backbeat that reassures your ear that the world is on solid ground.
The music here is most emotional on the final two tracks. “Finale – Humoresque” begins with a theme and collective shout, then hands the reins to Lewis for a tender, unaccompanied tenor saxophone improvisation that could break your heart. “O’ Rebicku” concludes the recital with the band playing a plainsong in unison, a humble and sincere expression of feeling that allows each melodic instrument to improvise something that sounds like a confession, an inner statement of honesty.
Calling Antonín from James Brandon Lewis’ Red Lily band is another rollicking but meaningful statement from one of the most vital artists in creative music.