Just a few dates to go on their current European tour and James Brandon Lewis’s trio find themselves on stage in the somewhat chilly marquee that Cheltenham rather grandly call their Jazz Arena at 12.30 p.m. on a Sunday. That doesn’t bring them a huge crowd, but their road-seasoned set lacks nothing in commitment and they immediately reach high intensity with Lewis’s penetrating tenor sax – not quite Aylerish but heading in that direction – wailing over the throb of Josh Werner’s meaty electric bass and Gerald Cleaver’s fluid commentary from the drum stool.
The intensity doesn’t let up for some while, as they run together themes mainly taken from the recent trio release Apple Cores (Chad Taylor on drums there). Bass and drums move between free-ish interludes and grooves and Lewis generally builds solos from relatively simple hooks that signal the beginning of a new excursion. It’s a preacherly style that folds in Ornette Coleman’s Broken Shadows and Mal Waldron’s Left Alone or, later, Wade in the Water into the sermonising as naturally as the trio’s own tunes.
Lewis finds inspiration in most of them today, and is splendidly raucous on the instrument that is best designed to do that, and powerful even when his tone softens to something more plaintive. He is majestic when in full flow, and while in some ways austere this is quite audience-friendly music, taking us up mount improv with plenty of hand-holds. There are hints of many earlier sax masters, but this set makes me wonder if this is how Booker Ervin might have played if he’d been around in 2025.
It was, in any case, as appealing as the records led one to expect, with the added charge that only a live show can provide. I’m not sure it benefited from Cheltenham’s experiment with making the Arena a standing venue (no-one seemed moved to dance although a few people did sway from side to side), but thanks to the stewards who found your senior citizen reviewer a chair on the sidelines. Here’s to the next visit from an artist who seems made for the challenge of maintaining interest with a single horn over a fully satisfying set.
Photo credit John Watson/ jazzcamera.co.uk
