“ ‘Eye Of I’ is a brilliant, beautiful record that deserves your focused attention. Sit with it; let it seep into your bones.” – Stereogum
“Throughout its 44-minute run time, ‘Eye Of I’ makes a case that the communicative nature that has defined jazz remains strong among our best young players.” – Bandcamp
“Like everything else about his ‘Eye of I’ era, it speaks to his bold approach to reinvention, and his recognition of the fact that when you get down to the gritty, underground roots, it’s a finer line between jazz and post-hardcore than you’d imagine.” – Washington City Paper
James Brandon Lewis and his new album ‘Eye of I’ are Downbeat Magazine’s June cover story, on stands now. To read the interview, subscribe to Downbeat digitally or order the June issue HERE. In the piece Lewis talks with Ammar Kalia about his writing process – unexpectedly for a saxophone player, he begins new pieces on the piano – playing with Marc Ribot and Wilco’s Nels Cline, and receiving praise from the Saxophone Colossus himself, Sonny Rollins.
“Subverting protocol is certainly a driving force for Lewis’ wide-ranging artistry,” Downbeat says. “In his blues, for instance, he is untethered from rigid metronomic structures to let his changes ring free, while countermelody consistently shadows his clear-sighted tones.”
‘Eye Of I’ is a record alive with the messy contrasts of life in the United States circa 2022 – dissonant one minute and graceful/prayerful the next; animated by anger and contention as well as the possibility of resolution; holding equal space for expressions of steadfast faith and wild spontaneous skronkage. This music swaps out the extra-musical research and cerebral high concepts of his critically acclaimed ‘Jesup Wagon’ and the aesthetic manifestos of ‘An Unruly Manifesto’ for a lean power trio of tenor sax, cello and drums with a simple punk-band-in-the-basement credo: Chasing energy. Above all else.
Lewis’ melodic identity encompasses ancient and future, inside and outside, density and openness, church and street. He’s a master of the short infectious motif, and like Sonny Rollins, devotes long expanses of his improvisation to the stretching and refracting and mutating of short phrases.
Today he has also shared a new live rendition of the ‘Eye of I’ track ‘Within You Are Answers’; watch the intimate solo performance below.
‘Eye Of I’
https://www.jblewis.com/
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