Wholly Moses

Love is connection. Love is gratitude. Love is passion. Love is audacity. These qualities define tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis’ second album with the glorious Red Lily Quintet: For Mahalia, With Love. Whereas Lewis used his transformative talents to illuminate renaissance man George Washington Carver in a whole new way on Jesup Wagon, the groundbreaking 2021 masterpiece that swept most major jazz polls, the saxophonist does the same for the pioneering gospel-music force of nature Mahalia Jackson. But this time it’s personal, because Lewis lived her music growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., playing there in churches as a youth and being nurtured by his grandmother, who had received Mahalia’s singing like a bolt from above.

Shiva Jones was the iconic vocalist with supergroup Quintessence during their mercurial 1969-72 reign. Although periodically active in new musical ventures in both Australia and the US during subsequent decades, he made no commercially released recordings and had left the Quintessence repertoire frozen in time. Then, 35 years later, Shiva recruited some of his favourite musicians, including original Quintessence guitarist Maha Dev and Swiss keyboard wizard Rudra Beauvert, to collaborate on a series of remarkably fresh studio recordings featuring old Quintessence favourites along with some wholly new material. Here, remastered from the original mixes, and with a track listing personally selected by Shiva, is the very best of these recordings. The accompanying booklet includes liner notes by Shiva Jones and Rudra Beauvert.