Recording of the Week, Immanuel Wilkins - Omega

This week’s Recording of the Week is one I had already highlighted in last week’s new release round-up, but after a few subsequent listens I couldn’t help but feel it needed a little more attention. For those who haven’t seen last week’s write-up yet, Omega is the debut record from twenty-two year old saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, released last week on Blue Note. Wilkins is a classic musical prodigy story; he was a musician from a young age, singing in church and playing various instruments throughout his first few school years, though he didn’t land on the saxophone until elementary school - inspired by Kenny Garrett, known for his time in both Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and Miles Davis’s band. Later moving to New York to study at Juilliard, Wilkins met trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who would help him break into the New York jazz scene, eventually picking up a gig with pianist Jason Moran (who also produced Omega). Since then he’s worked with musicians from Wynton Marsalis to Solange Knowles, culminating here with Omega, a personal project years in the making.

For his debut opus, Wilkins leads an all-star quartet of young up-and-comers with pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Daryl Johns and drummer Kweku Sumbry. Thomas has already made a notable guest appearance this year on Walter Smith III & Matthew Stevens’s In Common 2, while Johns already has gigs supporting the likes of Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman and Ambrose Akinmusire under his belt at his young age. Another similarly youthful member on the quartet, Sumbry also has an enviable amount of credits to his name, including being a member of saxophonist Jure Pukl’s quartet and featuring on his 2020 album Broken Circles.

Wilkins has been upfront about the fact that Omega is very much a chronicling of the Black American experience, both in terms of personal experiences and the wider historical context of the United States. ‘Warriors’, for instance, is a tribute to family, friends and one’s wider community. The blunt truth of the record really comes to a head with raw energy and discordant nature of the two ‘American Tradition’ tracks - ‘Ferguson’ and ‘Mary Turner’ - the former named after the 2014 protests sparked by the killing of Michael Brown, and the latter named after a victim of the May 1918 lynchings. ‘Mary Turner’ opens with jagged piano stabs before unfolding into raging, freeform jazz, while ‘Ferguson’ is a more tuneful piece with a restless melody, both pieces reflecting the chaos and horror of the events, both contemporary and historical. While both tracks certainly carry extra relevance in 2020 following the killing of Black Americans George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by American police, Wilkins’s statement is rather that events like these are ever-present, and disturbingly commonplace, for Black Americans. Being such a personal record, it’s perhaps a difficult part of Wilkins’s experience in life to ignore.

In between pieces of unrest and tenseness, both ‘The Dreamer’ and ‘Grace and Mercy’ find us in more mellow territory, the former a smooth ballad and the latter a forceful, rhythmic tune. Side B of Omega is less overtly politically or socially charged, opening with a four-part suite. Originally written by Wilkins back in 2013 during his time at Juilliard - perhaps kept for the right time and place to commit it to a recording - the suite itself is a dynamic set of tunes, with both contemplative and improvisatory moments peppered throughout, finally capping off the record with the explosive yet spiritual title track. With ambitious song structures, virtuosic playing and a solid social statement, Omega certainly makes for an imposing debut record.