Marquis Hill: New Gospel Revisited

Chicago-born trumpeter Marquis Hill released his first album while still in college and in 2022, just over a decade later, he has retooled it on New Gospel Revisited, recorded live in his hometown with a fresh lineup and tweaked instrumentation. It is a terrific disc.

Like his near contemporary and fellow trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Hill holds his music to be part of a broad musical continuum that includes genres other than jazz, notably hip hop. Also like Scott, Hill on occasion (though not this one) uses spoken word. This bigger musical picture is implied in New Gospel Revisited, but with a light touch. The album is, fundamentally, a celebration of the hard bop that drew Hill to jazz in his early teens, after a high-school teacher gave him a copy of Lee Morgan's Candy (Blue Note, 1958).

Like the London-based trumpeter Mark Kavuma, who also wears hard bop on his sleeve, Hill is no mere revivalist but a creative musician extending the form. His hard bop is an attitude rather than a codified style, and its accretions, hip-hop rhythms among them, place it firmly in the present day. On New Gospel Revisited, Hill fronts a sextet of youngish lions which is completed by tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, vibraphonist Joel Ross, pianist James Francies, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Kendrick Scott. The material from the 2011 album is expanded to include features for each of these players (see Tracks, below, for details).

Sumptuous yet sinewy, sleek yet tough, and not shy of being pretty on occasion, the album is distinguished both by the quality of the individual musicians, and their cohesion as a unit, but also by the standard of Hill's writing and arranging. The arrangements sometimes suggest the partnership of trumpeter Miles Davis and tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, roughly circa Davis' album Nefertiti (Columbia, 1968), something that may derive in part from the fact that one of Hill's college tutors was Ron Carter, the bassist in Davis' quintet from 1964 to 1968. But as Leslie Nielsen put it in the movie Airplane!, that's not important right now. What is important is that you get to hear this wonderful album.

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