Immanuel Wilkins Quartet - Live At The Village Vanguard, Vol. 1

GRAMMY-nominated alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins has announced his first-ever live album, Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard, a searing  document of his acclaimed quartet in action at the hallowed NYC jazz shrine. 

The album captures Wilkins’ quartet featuring Micah Thomas on piano, Ryoma Takenaga on bass, and Kweku Sumbry on drums taking flight on expansive explorations of Wilkins originals in a room steeped in jazz lore, adding his name to a list of jazz greats who have made seminal live recordings within these same walls. 

As Tina M. Campt writes in the album’s liner notes, the Village Vanguard “makes you feel the presence of so many performances that are still very much alive in the room. It is precisely this ambitious sono-spatial experiment that Wilkins takes on in this album: channeling the essence of a location that has witnessed numerous legendary performances. From John Coltrane to Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans to Elvin Jones, Dizzy Gillespie to Dexter Gordon (to name just a few), the Village Vanguard is a place where the sonic history of jazz dwells in the walls, floorboards, and ceiling. It is a venue many describe as holding cumulative layers of musical genius from decades of jazz performances.

“Live at the Village Vanguard is a bold endeavor to summon the Vanguard’s sonic history and make it audible,” continues Campt. “It harnesses this legacy and reactivates it as what he defines as practice – a practice of improvisational sounding, congregational listening, and devotional ritual.”