The music of saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins is filled with empathy and conviction, bonding arcs of melody and lamentation to pluming gestures of space and breath. Listeners were introduced to this riveting sound with his acclaimed debut album “Omega,” which was named the top jazz album of 2020 by the New York Times.
The album also introduced his remarkable quartet with Micah Thomas on piano, Daryl Johns on bass, and Kweku Sumbry on drums, a tight-knit unit that Wilkins features once again on his sophomore album, “The 7th Hand.”
“The 7th Hand” explores relationships between presence and nothingness across an hourlong suite of seven movements. “I wanted to write a preparatory piece for my quartet to become vessels by the end of the piece, fully,” said the Brooklyn-based, Philadelphia-born artist about whom Pitchfork has said “composes ocean-deep jazz epics.”
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