Reggie Watkins: Rivers

Jazz on an international scale is actually just a network of smaller, local jazz scenes that in 2025 exist in virtually every nation on earth. Most of the music happens on the local scene, where the closest of musical alliances are formed. Trombonist Reggie Watkins has managed to take us to that sacred place on his fourth album as a leader. Rivers (BYNK, 2025).

Needless to say, "Rivers" can refer to the geographic location of Watkins' adopted home city of Pittsburgh, PA. The confluence of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela rivers is the city's trademark. "You can't get away from river culture," says Watkins in the album's liner notes. "Whatever you do, wherever you go, there are always those three rivers you have to cross." He points out, however, that the term refers to Sam Rivers as well, one of the trombonist's main inspirations.

Watkins recorded the record straight up, with his working Pittsburgh quartet of pianist Michael J. Bernabe, bassist Eli Naragon and drummer Jason Washington jr It features twelve original post-bop compositions from Watkins. The tunes are finely composed and the playing is excellent throughout, with Watkins' pure, full, modern sound out front.

"Blues for 3-D" is a reference to fellow trombonists David Gibson, Steve Davis and Andre Hayward, and raises the major point of how a working quartet functions. Bernabe's insightful comping is resilient and in stride with his rhythm section mates. Naragon and Washington Jr. play together with a synchronicity that goes beyond time and creates a swift yet easy canvas for Watkins to spontaneously work through. The band can get angular as well, as is evidenced by the nod to Texas icons Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, "Ocularity," and the Monkish "Blue 6."

The album takes a notable shift with "Dawn of Peace," a gorgeous melody played in unspeakably beatific terms by Watkins. The trombonist's sound, perfect pitch and penchant for melodic improvisation all seem to come together in perfection on this piece. Those qualities are always present in his playing, as one can hear on any of his works as a leader, or during his eight-year association with Orrin Evans' Captain Black Big Band. Yet with this piece, and the modal "Meditation," we find these qualities in confluence with his compositional prowess, much like the three rivers that form their own rhythmic confluence in the city from which this fine quartet rises.

Watkins found his way to jazz, and to the trombone the same way many others have—the recordings of J.J. Johnson. There is that sense of hard bop, blues infused swing in his playing that Johnnson perfected as the primary influencer of his instrument. Yet Watkins' style somehow bears resemblance to the blue collar, tight knit community found historically and presently in the Steel City. It also contains soulful elements from his time in the Philadelphia-based big band of Evans— how can it not? But very few practitioners of the trombone manage to conjure a sound so beautiful, and an approach with such soulful intent. Rivers is the jazz public's best access to his playing to date.

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