A jazz musician has to attain an elite status before being invited to play at the hallowed shrine of jazz, NYC’s Village Vanguard. Like his iconic forbearers, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Joshua Redman, and others, altoist and composer Immanuel Wilkins and his quartet stepped into the venue on May 15th and 16th, 2025, recording three complete volumes of albums in a mere thirteen tracks. These lengthy tracks make for intense, curious listening of how his quartet improvises in the moment, communicates with each other, and creates colorful harmonic textures. In a recent interview, Blue Note President, Don Was, certainly a bit biased, said that, like Coltrane, people will be listening to Immanuel Wilkins 60 years from now. He might just be right. Wilkins has a cerebral quotient and an expressive approach to his instrument. He can play with similar intensity. With his Grammy-nominated 2024 Blue Bloods, he will now have six on Blue Note, with the three installments of Immanuel Wilkins: Live at the Vanguard. He is not yet 30 years old.
Wilkins leads his quartet of pianist Micah Thomas, who has a trio album and three solo piano albums as a leader; bassist Ryoma Takenaga; and drummer Kweku Sumbry. Wilkins calls these sessions ‘practice,’ defined in his terms this way –” working things out without a certain set of key variables; a refusal of the conditions expected of your production; when the intensity is high and the labor begins to yield this certain kind of beauty; falling together forward.” That’s a lot of words for what is essentially an ongoing rehearsal, which only the most confident could pull off.
The opening track, “Warriors,” is a case in point. The piece builds slowly as the band members find their footing, but it doesn’t take long before the quartet is cooking, driven by Sumbry’s kinetic kit work and Wilkins’s dynamic playing. The mood turns quickly delicate in “Composition 2,” modelled on J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Each musician’s voice is heard as the piece revolves around a limited set of keys. Bassist Takenaga caresses his strings, and Wilkins plays with a crystalline tone. Sumbry is subtle in his support this time, but is quietly present. Thomas provides restrained, thoughtful accompaniment in this cautious, yet intriguing piece that foreshadows the two highly hypnotic, spiritual pieces that follow.
“Charanam” is the only piece not credited to Wilkins. It’s from Alice Coltrane’s 1982 Turiya Sings, where the songs are sung in Sanskrit and are based on Kirtan, a traditional Hindu and Sikh devotional practice involving musical, call-and-response chanting of mantras, hymns, and the names of the divine. The music takes on circular quality with rhythmic repetitions that revolve around Sumbry’s propulsive beats, Thomas’s wide-ranging chords, and a trademark spiraling solo from Wilkins. At one point, Wilkins uses a fluttering technique rarely heard on a saxophone but more often associated with a trumpet. While all three of these lengthy pieces demand acute listening both from the musicians and the audience,
“Eternal” may go too far in the hypnotic direction. A repeated eleven-note phrase extends for thirteen of the eighteen minutes. It’s very low and slow to the point of ponderous, after a promising beginning that has an upbeat phrase. We keep waiting for a resolution that never arrives. Instead, the repetitive two chords keep descending in volume, to slip away into the ether. This could well be an example of a piece that creates a certain sensation for those in the room, but doesn’t translate that well to a recording. Nonetheless, the quartet should be commended for their intense interactive listening.
Fear not. There are several explosive tracks on the subsequent volumes that, like ”Warriors,” reveal the quartet motoring full throttle. Volume 1 will be released on all formats on March 20. Vol. 2 arrives digitally on April 17 and Vol. 3 on May 15, also in digital format.
