James Brandon Lewis Trio - Apple Cores (2025)

Artist: James Brandon Lewis Trio
Title Of Album: Apple Cores
Year Of Release: 2025
Label (Catalog#) : Anti 8102-2
Country:: USA
Genre: Jazz, Free Jazz, Jazz Funk
Quality: FLAC (tracks+cue,log)
Bitrate: Lossless
Time: 42:09
Full Size: 255Mb(+3%)
Info:jblewis.com
Upload: xfile.cloud

The super-prolific, genre-dodging, powerhouse tenor king that is James Brandon Lewis delivers again with a trio album dedicated to Don Cherry and Amiri Baraka.

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.

Tracks:
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1. Apple Cores #1 02:50
2. Prince Eugene 04:52
3. Five Spots to Caravan 04:18
4. Of Mind and Feeling 02:41
5. Apple Cores #2 03:37
6. Remember Brooklyn & Moki 04:48
7. Broken Shadows 03:26
8. D.C. Got Pocket 04:56
9. Apple Cores #3 03:13
10. Don't Forget Jayne 03:41
11. Exactly, Our Music 03:22

Personnel:
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James Brandon Lewis: saxophone
Chad Taylor: drums, mbira
Josh Werner: bass, guitar

All thanks to original releaser