Jazz Articles about Immanuel Wilkins

About Immanuel Wilkins

Radio & Podcasts

Kevin Eubanks, Orrin Evans & Immanuel Wilkins

by Joe Dimino
April 3, 2022

From a new super jazz group Pluto Juice, we begin the 745th Episode of Neon Jazz with the 2022 song “Pluto and Beyond." The band includes Dayna Stephens and we play on song off his 2015 album Reminiscent. From there, we get into new music from Gregg Hill, Remy Le Boeuf and Micah Graves. Kansas City saxophonist Adam Larson has a new album With Love, from Chicago and we explore his release. Finally, we hear from a powerful duo in ...

Album Review

Immanuel Wilkins: The 7th Hand

Read "The 7th Hand" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
January 16, 2022

That we are free to think saxophone firebrand Immanuel Wilkins' 2020 Blue Note debut Omega served as a sign of hope amid a particularly hopeless year puts an awful lot of weight on the shoulders of a 25-year-old and, beyond doubt, colors the fate of The 7th Hand. Humbly and characteristically, Wilkins and company meet the challenge head-on. Searching for nothingness in a culture of excess, “Lift," the seventh and closing exhortation to empathy that guides The 7th ...

Album Review

Immanuel Wilkins: The 7th Hand

Read "The 7th Hand" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
January 10, 2022

Dopo l'acclamato debutto di Omega Immanuel Wilkins disegna un altro avvincente affresco, confermando l'intento a elaborare nuovi percorsi musicali inglobando la tradizione. Con lui ritroviamo i giovani partner del suo quartetto (Micah Thomas al pianoforte, Daryl Johns al contrabbasso e Kweku Sumbry alla batteria) più la bravissima flautista Elena Pinderhughes (già con Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah e Ambrose Akinmusire) e l'ensemble di percussioni Farafina Kan. Mentre conferma il magistrale eloquio strumentale con lunghi, intensi ...

Album Review

Orrin Evans: The Magic of Now

Read "The Magic of Now" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
December 10, 2021

The pandemic brought with it a shift in sensibilities for many musicians as they navigated new and unfamiliar waters. There were pros and cons of all this activity, with many streaming events and weighty recording projects taking place. Few of the albums coming from that period speak with such authority and freshness as the set at hand. Pianist Evans assembled a trio with bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Bill Stewart back in 2014 for a festival performance and hoped to ...

What is Jazz?

Jazz Returns to Seattle's Central District: Two Evenings of Black Brilliance

by Paul Rauch
November 19, 2021

There is a miracle on the corner of 12th Avenue and Jackson St. in what is now Seattle's “Little Saigon." In what was a traditional African American and Jewish community before the influx of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian immigrants after the war in Southeast Asia in the early 1980's, this urban crossroads was the main pulse of an integrated nightclub scene in the 1930's, '40s and '50s that featured dozens of late-night jazz clubs that not only housed the city's ...

Catching Up With

Immanuel Wilkins: Omega is Just the Beginning

by Mark Robbins and Derrick Lucas
August 26, 2021

Saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, in the midst of celebrating the success of his debut album Omega (Blue Note, 2020), appeared at the 2021 Newport Jazz Festival as the leader of his own band. With his band of four years, Micah Thomas on piano, bassist Daryl Johns and drummer Kweku Sumbry, Wilkins performed pieces from Omega as well as songs previously unrecorded. Besides leading his own band, Wilkins has been an in demand sideman to such artists as Gretchen Parlato, Joel Ross, ...

Album Review

Orrin Evans: The Magic of Now

Read "The Magic of Now" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
July 15, 2021

Timing is everything, the old masters teach. So pianist/composer/bandleader Orrin Evans drops the brazen The Magic of Now just in time. Just in time for the world to open up, renew its commitment, and move forward. Just in time for all to engage in those necessary conversations about civil upkeep. Put plainly, The Magic of Now is the music to lead the charge. A whirlwind of perpetual buoyancy and boundless risk aversion, the eight easeful dances defining The ...