Giovanni Guidi, James Brandon Lewis, Thomas Morgan, Joao Lobo – A New Day
ECM 2808/ 5891503. LP Review by Phil Johnson)
The addition of tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis to Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi’s regular trio of bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Joao Lobo is a wonderful piece of creative casting. Lewis complements the long-established group’s extremely sensitive and impeccably collegiate interplay with a welcome slice of gospel-inspired jazz passion. A daringly inventive trio-only version of ‘My Funny Valentine’ – the album’s sole standard – where Guidi glides through the familiar melody in a series of deft passes and elisions – provides another real highlight.
What the Howard University graduate Lewis – currently touring with co-op band the Messthetics, who have recorded a recent album for Impulse! – brings to the table, apart from his background in gospel music, is a forthright tone, which in itself conveys a sense of purpose. Through long-held notes that can recall Charles Lloyd (and of course Coltrane before Lloyd), Lewis helps to create a powerful melodic counterweight to Guidi and the trio’s intensely textural ensemble-improvisations.
At times, the combination is absolutely spellbinding. The two tunes that close each of the LP’s sides, ‘Only Sometimes’ – credited as a four-way improvisation but in which the saxophonist appears to quote from Coltrane’s ‘Alabama’ and several gospel standards – and the lovely Guidi composition ‘Wonderland’, where Lewis slowly builds up a sheets of sound-style head of steam, are remarkable performances. Like ‘A New Day’ as a whole, they continue to deepen with each listen. On the album’s opening track, ‘Cantos Del Ocells’, a version of a Catalan folk tune evidently once sung by Joan Baez, the trio begin alone before Lewis enters halfway through and brings light and air to what might otherwise seem an overly etiolated interpretation. Altogether, it’s a very winning team.
Recorded last summer at Studios La Buissonne in France, the LP sounds superb.
A New Day is released today 12 July 2024. Giovanni Guidi will perform at Gallery Rosenfeld in London on 18 September
