JazzKLUB / Immanuel Wilkins / Controlled Disorientation - NOSPR

‘The most important debut in years’ wrote a JazzTimes reviewer of Wilkins’s first album, released on the Blue Note label when the saxophonist was just twenty-two years old. ‘Moving, profound and stunning’, was DownBeat's verdict on the jazz suite Blues Blood, which earned Wilkins a Grammy nomination. Fortunately, the Philadelphia-born artist has not allowed himself to be smothered by praise. Nor is he a hot-headed youngster who plays faster than he thinks. From his very debut, he displayed a striking maturity, coupled with a tendency towards melancholy. He has collaborated with such stars as Jason Moran, Meshell Ndegeocello and Cécile McLorin Salvant, yet since 2017 the same quartet that will perform in Katowice has remained the principal vehicle for his musical thinking. The outstanding 2026 live album Live at the Village Vanguard captures the band's remarkable energy and conceptual scope. After nine years together, the quintet has reached a new level of understanding, becoming a single musical organism. As Wilkins himself puts it, this makes it possible ‘reach a state of disorientation on the bandstand’ and, through the intensity of harmony and rhythm, ‘alter the ways listeners experience time, emotion, and history’.

Tomasz Gregorczyk

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