James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet

Tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader James Brandon Lewis is one of the most brilliant and relevant jazz musicians of our time. “Lewis is a saxophonist who embodies and transcends tradition,” as The New York Times put it. That's how it is. With his powerful, adventurous sound, Brandon Lewis is a child of John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, but he has now taken his own unique path. He connects lyrical melodies with hard-hitting free jazz, tapping into a deeper, spiritual dimension. In his melodies Lewis mixes old and new, inside and outside, closed and open, church and street.

He is a master of the short catchy motif, and like Sonny Rollins he devotes large parts of his improvisation to stretching, breaking and mutating short phrases. The son of a pastor, Lewis grew up in Buffalo playing in church. At home he listened to the titans of jazz on the record player. As he grew older, he met free-jazz saxophonist Charles Gayle and funk/soul saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. After moving to New York, he played regularly with bassists William Parker and Jamaaladeen Tacuma of Ornette Coleman's Prime Time band.

The saxophonist returns to LantarenVenster with his Red Lily Quintet, the band with which he also made the album Jesup Wagon. This tour focuses on the music from the beautiful album For Mahlia, With Love (TAO Forms Records). This title obviously refers to the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Songs made famous by her such as Swing Low, Go Down Moses and Wade in the Water are the starting point.