Immanuel Wilkins Quartet at The Triple Door

Immanuel Wilkins Quartet
The Triple Door
Seattle, WA
February 28, 2025

Alto saxophonist/composer Immanuel Wilkins burst onto the scene in 2020 with his premier Blue Note release, Omega. Straight out of Juilliard in New York, Wilkins was part of a collective of musicians corralled out of the school by the esteemed label, much in the way labels used to cruise the Gotham jazz club scene with ears open, hoping to find the next big thing. Now riding the acclaim of his latest release Blues Blood (Blue Note, 2024), Wilkins has hit the road with his longtime quartet, a cohesive unit that formed when Wilkins first hit New York out of Philadelphia.

There is a dividing line when jumping onto the Wilkins bandwagon so to speak, a difference between what Wilkins the artist puts together in his recordings and what one may discover at a club date with Wilkins the saxophonist and bandleader. He is a multi-faceted artist with interests that exceed his deep-down love for playing jazz, that may take shape in a myriad of forms. Blues Blood, for example, uses the quartet at its core, but the music branches out by way of formidable guest vocalists. In any case, the personnel of the album spreads out artistically in terms of ensemble configuration and Wilkins' genius for composition and social narrative. Bottom line for the audience entering Seattle's Triple Door was that this was to be an in-the-moment jazz performance with less production value and more of Wilkins as an acclaimed altoist along the lines of Gary Bartz or Kenny Garrett. This is the level of his talent.

The quartet had played the previous night at the PDX Jazz Festival in Portland, breaking down the music of Blues Blood into its component parts. Expecting the same, a sold-out house settled into the venerable Vaudeville theater-turned-nightclub only to hear Wilkins announce that they would be playing music exclusively from his second album, The 7th Hand (Blue Note, 2022). The quartet included regulars Micah Thomas on piano and Kweku Sumbry on drums, but would feature a new face on bass in 20-year-old Ryoma Takenaga. After Wilkins' initial discourse with the audience, the quartet settled in for what amounted to a 90-minute set without interruption, presenting the music of the album as one continuous story. Without the production aspects of the studio at hand, the band used the bones of the music to express the narrative through spontaneous composition in brilliant fashion.

The quartet leaped out of the starting gate, on fire. After working through the initial melody of "Emanation," Wilkins launched into a memorable and lengthy solo that supercharged what at the time was a chatty and mildly-distracted audience. The clattering of dishes and silverware and the remnants of pre-gig conversations faded quickly as Wilkins worked through chorus after chorus, not just embellishing a central theme, but constructing new melody lines that spun out of his instrument in the magical 'now.' While most jazz concerts have a definite performance arc about them, the audience was left to wonder where the quartet could possibly take us after Wilkins' rousing entrance. To those who had followed his career per recordings, but especially through live performance, it was immediately evident that the altoist had taken yet another leap forward in his playing, and ultimately his artistry overall. Less evident on the date was the fact that he was just 27 years old. Thomas, for his part, offered a solo that typified what fans have known about him since he arrived on the scene at the same time as Wilkins—that he is a generational type talent in the whirlwind early stages of what promises to be a long and fruitful tenure on the scene. His thoughtful, insightful comping would have been enough to come to that realization, but the fluid, dynamic melodic sense of his soloing was exceptional.

When the band settled into the more moderate tempos exemplified by "Shadow," it brought out the subtleties of the marvelous musicianship before the Seattle audience. Sumbry certainly has an intuitive feel for where the music is going and where the bandleader himself is bound to venture, never overplaying, but adding colorful highlights and dynamic pockets of shifting cadence. Takenaga displayed stunning technique while playing at fast tempos with relative ease. He added melodic interludes expressed in bold terms during more subdued parts of the performance, something remarkable for a new entrant into a quartet that had already spent so much time together onstage and in the studio.

Wilkins is fortunate in having a band that is so synchronous with his intent as a composer, playing not just the music placed before them, but following a similar path to that of the leader, leading to a common destination—learn the music, forget the music and just play. Even Takenaga—who required a music stand and score to occasionally glance at during this, the second stop on a two stop trip with the quartet—played as if the tunes were second nature to him, listening and responding like a seasoned veteran.

The ultimate chemistry or group mind of the quartet carried the band through "Lighthouse" and "Lift," once again giving the audience the opportunity to hear the music in a new and fresh way. Very often the actual playing of an artist such as Wilkins, one who is multidimensional in his artistry in music and outside of it, can be somehow lost or at least diminished. In Wilkins' case, his saxophone playing as a side musician can seem freer, less encumbered by the responsibilities of leadership and performing original music that he has envisioned in a certain way. Jazz fans, especially those that have been around a few decades or more, and have witnessed many of the icons of the form, attach themselves to the spontaneity of the moment in a deeper sense than any compositional or narrative qualities provided by the artist. The final fifteen minutes of this performance provided all of that and more. Four young talented musicians revolving around a common center within Wilkins' brilliant conceptions offered up a blessing, a reason to feel hopeful and connected in very challenging times.

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