James Brandon Lewis Quartet

Championed by Sonny Rollins and mentored by the likes of William Parker and Wadada Leo Smith, James Brandon Lewis is one of the most enterprising and adventurous saxophonists in jazz right now. His path to that position was neither straightforward nor predictable. Raised in Buffalo and the son of a pastor and a singer, he was steeped in gospel music, with his father’s mother telling him how seeing Mahalia Jackson as a child had impacted her profoundly and how she’d wanted to be a gospel singer herself. Lewis studied jazz at Howard, moved to Colorado to be with his father and pursue a calling as a gospel saxophonist, and eventually headed to CalArts, finding and then becoming part of jazz’s vanguard there. Wildly prolific during the last decade, from two bristling albums with The Messthetics to an absorbing and challenging 2023 album of Mahalia Jackson interpretations with his Red Lily Quintet, Lewis has found space within his career for both of these pillars of Black American music.

But Lewis has never been as compelling with questions of faith as he is on 2026’s Omni, a massive exploration of belief and doubt made with his quartet. The quartet is anchored by Chad Taylor, the Chicago Underground Duo cofounder who is Lewis’ steadfast collaborator, and bassist Brad Jones, an alumnus of bands with John Zorn, Dave Douglas, and Ornette Coleman. A lauded bandleader himself, Cuban native Aruán Ortiz commands the piano. As the band clashes and thrashes behind him, Lewis blows through the melody of “Line Upon Line” like he’s stress-testing scripture. But they are jubilant during “Fire In My Bones,” writhing like evangelists in the pulpit. Threaded together by three pieces that present instrumental conceptions of God (“Omnipotent,” “Omniscient,” and “Omnipresent”), Omni is a ferocious and relatable record, Lewis’ relationship to faith examined in every theme and twisting variation.