James Brandon Lewis - Apple Cores

James Brandon Lewis — Apple Cores

Apple Cores is the latest full-length album from New York tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, "one of the fiercest sounds in jazz today" (The Guardian) with a "penchant for unbound exploration" (Pitchfork). Informed by the rhythms and textures of hip-hop and funk while remaining rooted in jazz, James Brandon Lewis Trio's Apple Cores was recorded with Chad Taylor (drums/mbira) and Josh Werner (bass/guitar). The recording was a collective compositional process that happened over the course of two intense, entirely improvised sessions.

"If you don't spend time with your band, you're not going to really trust that moment," Lewis says. "I think we've spent enough time together to where we can do that. I've been playing Chad for like 10 years, so that's like water right there and me and Josh have been playing together since like 2018."

The album takes its name and intention from the column that poet and jazz theorist Amiri Baraka wrote for DownBeat in the 1960s. "I was first exposed to Amiri Baraka at Howard University (also Baraka's alma mater)," says Lewis. "Blues People (Baraka's groundbreaking 1963 study of Black American music), was required reading. I'm always in constant dialogue with his work."

In addition to Baraka, the influence of another jazz giant looms mightily over Apple Cores: trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist, Don Cherry. In a testament to Cherry's influence over the music that the trio is playing, Lewis designed each song title as a cryptogram of sorts, making subtle references to Cherry's life and music.

"The record itself is a nod to Amiri but mainly a nod to Don Cherry, using Amiri as a branch to really get the conversation going," Lewis explains. "It's not a tribute in the sense that we're playing Don Cherry compositions, but that the music is commenting on his musical curiosity." It's fitting that Lewis would explore Cherry's music in this way, as he has paid tribute to him in the past. "This album also picks up the conversation where my 2015 album Days of FreeMan left off. I covered a Don Cherry piece 'Bamako Love' from his 1985 album Home Boy (Sister Out). That album exposed me to Don's risk-taking with his attempts to rap."

 

1. Apple Cores #1

2. Prince Eugene

3. Five Spots to Caravan

4. Of Mind and Feeling

5. Apple Cores #2

6. Remember Brooklyn & Moki

7. Broken Shadows

8. D.C. Got Pocket

9. Apple Cores #3

10. Don't Forget Jayne

11. Exactly, Our Music *Track 6 & 7 Swapped on LP Sequencing

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