Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard

Firebrand alto-saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins takes over the Village Vanguard and keeps it loose, y'all. From the rogue bossa nova "Ring Shout" and its immediate successor, "Composition II," each scenario has its very own sweep and sway. Take, for instance, the hell-raising, elders-chant fever inherent in "Composition IX."  Twenty-three raucous, raise-the-rafters minutes wherein each participant—pianist and fellow hell-raisers Micah Thomas, bassist and man-on-a-mission Ryoma Takenaga and Kweku Sumbry, a swift footed drummer deeply schooled in Elvin Jones and Max Roach—inflame Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard.

Everyone has come out for this gig! Die-hards, tourists. Veterans, novices. John Coltrane is high-fiving the back tables. McCoy Tyner will have a scotch and water. Horace Silver says hi. Over there in the corner to the left of the drummer, the Modern Jazz Quartet huddles. Miles Davis, as is his custom, lurks in shadow.

The grand, three-volume live outing is one of those gigs where even Charles Mingus wishes he had sat in. Sonny Rollins, too. The expansive effort goes down as easily as any of the classic Live At The Village Vanguard recordings we built our collections on. Think of titles with Bill Evans or Art Pepper in them.

Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard is not just a well-versed lesson in jazz history; it is a barn-burning addition to that very alive history. Equal parts cacophony and restive harmony; master thesis and frat-party blow-out, just one listen to the dark, effervescent hypnosis that "Charanam" espouses is all the proof anyone needs. But then the quartet gives generously on the sly and slinky "Waiting Pt 1." The bopping rush and rumble of "Warriors." The full-on charge of "The Big Country" into that very special Coltrane realm of spirituality, where Thomas, seemingly possessed by McCoy Tyner comps feverishly behind Wilkin's barley contained hysteria. That Sumbry and Takenaga are borne on the high-flying spirts of Jones and Jimmy Garrison only seals the deal. Even the howls of approval from the Vanguard crowd echo back to classic live recordings by the classic quartet.

It is relatively impossible to count the number of evolutions that transpire and conspire to make  "Eternal" an absolutely around-the-bases, dance—in-the-end-zone performance. Thad Jones and Mel Lewis toast the fervent upstarts—no one on the Vanguard's fabled one-step—up stage has yet to turn thirty—who raise a great deal of both hell and glory as the track follows "Charanam" into listener history. That it serves to end "Volume One" only double-down swears to the promise that Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard keeps royally and, without hesitation, on "Volume Two" and "Volume Three."

Like the many elders in the room and those on the storied stages of Heaven, Wilkins, Thomas, Takenaga, (recipient of the 2022 James Moody Jazz Scholarship ) and Sumbry, ( Cyrus Chestnut, Shabaka Hutchings), throw a most perfect light on the room, and it is a thrilling wonder to bask in it. It is a time-honored and well-argued fact that there lies a chasm of difference between listening to jazz and experiencing it. Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard obliterates that barrier, hearts and horn held high.

Please note Blue Note will release each volume separately. "Volume 1" on March 20.  "Volume 2"  on April 17, and "Volume 3" on May 15.