The new album from young jazz vibraphone star Joel Ross is called Gospel Music. For most of its two-LP running time, however, it is not an exploration of “gospel music”. Ross grew up playing that style in a Black church in Chicago, but we know him as a premier contemporary jazz improviser with a taste for intricate structures and advanced harmonies. The majority of Gospel Music fits that mold — played by a sextet featuring two saxophones (Josh Johnson on alto and Maria Grand on tenor, piano (Jeremy Corren), bass (Kanoa Mendenhall), and drums (Jeremy Dutton).
Most of the music is, in every respect, contemporary jazz, shifting in and out of various grooves and moods, though tracing a biblical story arc through the names of the 17 mostly brief tracks (“Trinity”, “Repentance”, “The Sacred Place”) and through the moods that are conveyed in each. The bulk of tracks don’t sound much like “gospel” (in the sense of echoing the style of, say, Kirk Franklin), but there is a steady solemnity to the project, despite the abundance of creative, modern improvising. Then, for a handful of songs (several of which include vocal performances), Ross seems to bring the title of the album home.
The opening portion of Gospel Music is well represented by “Hostile”. Dutton is on his ride cymbal from the start, swinging the track, as Ross begins with a rattling vibes improvisation that could have come from Milt Jackson. When the band enters, however, Corren offers a set of four unswinging, half-note block chords which are then mimicked by the horns and bass in a choral style over jazz drumming. The same rhythmic feel accompanies Johnson’s fleet, modern alto solo, but once Ross starts his solo, Mendenhall locks in with the drums, playing a walking jazz bass line. If I dropped you into the middle of Ross’s solo and told you this was “gospel” music, you would roll your eyes.
That, of course, is the fun of Gospel Music. Ross’s statements about the music as it was released make clear how seriously he takes its Christian message. Still, most of the music itself only implies it through its sense of balance, clarity, and flowing democracy of sound. It is a very inviting record. Sonically, the band sounds slick — with the saxophones blending like butter and vanilla in cake batter — but the compositions keep you hopping.
“Nevertheless”, for example, places a set of super-syncopated accents in the written melody and the locked-in accompaniment. The long, bopping solo at the center of the tune rides over fairly conventional jazz swing for a long while, but Ross chops it up with some composed elements, where the band unites with the leader for a syncopated moment. It is a dazzling whole.
“Repentance” features a strong solo from Grand on tenor saxophone, with Dutton and Mendenhall playing a flowing 4/4 swing that includes regular syncopated hiccups, which the horn flows over with elegance. The composition returns, and those stuttering patterns in the rhythm section settle into a funky groove that some fans might associate with Robert Glasper — and the track flows directly into the next track, “The Sacred Place”, which features Corren’s piano to wonderful effect.
Some other compositions are even more intricate and modern. “Word for Word” is built on a push-pull odd meter that features Dutton, deftly tap dancing through complexity to make it sound easy. The opening theme has the darting, spinning sound of a Steve Coleman melody, from which Ross veers off into an improvisation that defies the possible. Then, the performance’s conclusion shifts the Gospel Music story arc toward a sanctified moment. The horns and piano move up and down together over a thumping bass pedal point, sounding rather like a church choir.
It is on the album’s tenth track that Gospel Music embraces a more explicit gospel aesthetic. “A Little Love Goes a Long Way” uses the rising and falling cadences of American gospel to define a theme for Ross and his horn section, with only Dutton improvising. That leads directly into “Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ”, a simple tune that meditatively repeats a four-bar melodic figure for vocalist Laura Bibb, with the rhythm section providing a characteristic 12/8 groove beneath a backbeat. That flows directly into “Calvary”, a vocal feature for Ekep Nkwelle that is deliciously sanctified. A series of harmonic shifts and layered vocals and saxophone parts remind you that this is a jazz album, but Kirk Franklin no longer seems that far off.
The next song, “The Giver”, sounds less like gospel, but it is a plaintive duet for Corren’s piano and singing/acoustic guitar from Andy Louis. “If the hope of giving is to love the living / The giver risks madness in the act of giving” — the song exquisitely draws from the words of James Baldwin. There are two more instrumental “chapters” to the Gospel Music story after this — life-affirming themes that let Ross’s jubilant vibes sparkle along the surface of the band.
I come away from the journey of Gospel Music refreshed and impressed. So much of today’s “contemporary jazz” pursues a fusion with various other forms like classical “new music”, world music, and hip-hop. The results are typically complicated, challenging, and thrilling, but what Joel Ross achieves on this unique new album has a different quality. He takes his usual pyrotechnics and funnels them into a refined ensemble sound that can also channel sincere, powerful jazz with a gospel center.