sunneversetsonmusic | monthly music blog

ALBUM OF THE DAY

23 APRIL 2026

These Are Soulful Days

JAMES BRANDON LEWIS

& LUTOSŁAWSKI QUARTET

Released 18 April 2026

TAO Forms

*****

A profound and elegantly constructed convergence of jazz improvisation and chamber form, channelling history, spirituality and collective memory into a singular, deeply resonant statement.

Few artists of his generation have risen with the clarity and momentum of James Brandon Lewis. Born in 1983, the tenor saxophonist and composer has become a defining voice in contemporary jazz, recognised for his blend of spiritual intensity, historical awareness and compositional ambition. Named DownBeat’s 2025 Artist of the Year, his recent work, from Jesup Wagon (2021) to For Mahalia, With Love (2023) has consistently topped critics’ polls, affirming his growing stature.

Although performed in 2021, These Are Soulful Days marks a significant expansion of Lewis's practice: his first extended composition for string quartet and saxophone, performed here with the Lutosławski Quartet.

Commissioned for the Jazztopad Festival in Wrocław, the work draws on a “quilted history” of African-American music - blues, spirituals and jazz - reframed within a chamber setting.

The piece unfolds with a sense of purpose that feels both grounded and expansive.

From its opening passages, the interaction between Lewis’s tenor and the quartet establishes the album’s central dynamic. The masterful integration of saxophone and strings forms a shifting harmonic and textural field, with elements sometimes leading, sometimes dissolving into the ensemble.

Lewis’s compositional voice is unmistakable. Themes rooted in blues and spiritual traditions emerge clearly, and are absorbed into a broader musical language that balances lyricism with structural clarity. .

Ultimately, These Are Soulful Days honours tradition while extending it, and presenting a vision that feels at once personal, historical and forward-looking.

CLIPPED!

Massive Attack have shared their collaboration with Tom Waits, "Boots on the Ground" and sadly for all, their song is never more urgent and timely. The song chronicles the madness and rabid abandonment of mankind to the commands of "The Masters of War” as Dylan put it. It marks Massive Attack's first new music since 2020 and Waits’s first new recording since the 2011 album, Bad As Me.
The song is available today on streaming platforms, and will be followed by a 12" vinyl release. The 12” edition features "Boots on the Ground" on Side A, with an exclusively Waits B-side titled "The Fly” - a track featuring Waits’s trademark droll and sardonic spoken word.

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