Micah Thomas: Mountains

It can never not be exciting and enthralling to listen to a young artist come into his or her own as pianist/composer Micah Thomas does on the very live, very rollicking, very palpable Mountains.

Thomas' fourth disc as captain of the ship chronicles four hot sets in June of 2023 commissioned by The Jazz Gallery Residency Fellowship at New York's Jazz Gallery.

The pianist and company get right down to it as Thomas delves headlong into his large ensemble fantasies and switchbacks and side winds into the free-wheeling "Life." And though Thomas might explain that the composition is a "complex musical journey that mirrors the diversity of organic structures" it sure pops and parties rowdy as hell and sometimes that is all that matters.

Onstage and bursting with ideas toe-to-toe with a cast of jazz creators—ever psyched trumpeter Adam O'Farrill, alto sax colossus Immanuel Wilkins, Nicole Glover's wily tenor sax, trombonist Caleb Smith, bassist Kanoa Mendenhall and drummer Kweku Sumbry—Thomas and friends let loose an unimpeded, wave upon wave of solos that somehow gel into a central point, only to go about its merry way with as as loose a groove as possible. The crisp "Processing" establishes a hip bandstand air. "Lament" begs us to sit it on an intimate generational conversation between Thomas and the brass section concerning the state of the disunity we inhabit.

Spliced from all four sets into one quixotic whole, "libre" could be a considered a fascinating, contemporary nod to the visionary editing and tape manipulation tactics of Teo Macero— Mingus Ah Um (Columbia, 1959), In a Silent Way, (Columbia, 1969). It is quite the set-up: It swings one moment then free falls gregariously. Jagged, off-kilter, "libre" serves to intro "no answer," another state of the union discourse that the kids seem to be engaged in quite a lot these days. But "no answer" takes the opposite tack: it comes out of the box burly and cantankerous, shape shifts to dancehall, when, at around the five minute forty five second point, Glover breaks from the script, the dancers scatter, and rips it up in what may someday be considered one of her defining moments. That Mendenhall and Sumbry collude as if they have been locked at the hip forever (these sets were the first time they had played together) is just icing on the cake.

"Hide" quietens things down as Wilkins wraps warmly around this fervent Thomas sonata. "Hide" gives way to "The Mountain." An intense treatise on the future past that Thomas seems content to let the band expound upon, Mendenhall and Sumbry again hold center, whipping a frothy car chase rhythm, as the horns rally and rouse. "nomad" slinks. "collapse" does just that. "Encounter" brings all of Thomas' large scale notions to fruition. Mountains is a steady, triumphant climb to the top.