Don’t look now, but Joshua Redman’s jazz career is evolving

There’s an early moment on Joshua Redman’s new album “where are we” that seems to open up a quietly astonishing landscape where the Berkeley saxophonist has never ventured before.

The release is his first collaboration with a vocalist — captivating newcomer Gabrielle Cavassa — and his debut album on his new label, the storied Blue Note Records. If the lack of capitals in the concept album’s title feels like a feint at modesty, the project’s scope speaks to Redman’s ambition. Formatted like a double LP, “where we are” takes an emotional X-ray of the nation via an expansive reimagining of the American Songbook, city by city.

The song that first seizes the imagination is a mashup of “Going to Chicago Blues,” the swaggering Count Basie staple for vocalist and co-writer Jimmy Rushing and (decades later) Joe Williams, with an interpolated motif from Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago.” The album features a superlative cast with pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Joe Sanders, drummer Brian Blade and four guest artists who each contribute on one track, but it’s Cavassa’s beguiling blend of old-soul emotional vulnerability, legato phrasing, and her cashmere-textured tone that coaxes Redman into luxuriant balladry.

Rather than evoking Chicago as a tough, hustling big-shouldered town, Cavassa decants a hazy, liquid-ballad tempo that paints the city as a late-night reverie, as if viewing the skyscraperred Loop nightscape via a reflection on Lake Michigan.

She credits Redman’s arrangement with reimagining the song “far from a traditional blues, and far from any existing recordings of ‘Going to Chicago,’” said Cavassa, 28, who  joins Redman’s new quartet on a tour that includes performances at Kuumbwa Jazz Center Sept. 20, the SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium Sept. 21, and Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall Sept. 22.

“Once we got into the studio, the song seemed to play itself,” she said, singling out the contributions of Chicago-reared vibraphonist Joel Ross, the guest soloist “for whom the arrangement is also quite bespoke.”

“He came in for the afternoon to join us, which was seamless and delightful,” she added. “I think the song sounds dream-like and easy because it was.”

Forged during the pandemic via email, text and Zoom sessions, Redman’s relationship with Cavassa didn’t take on an in-person dimension until they started recording the album. In making his first major foray with a vocalist, he singled out a young artist just starting to introduce herself to the scene. It’s intriguing that her early steps echo that route that turned Redman into a star.

He famously catapulted into international visibility by taking first place at the 1991 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition. Cavassa, who now lives in New Orleans and spent her formative years studying jazz at San Francisco State and the sadly defunct Club Deluxe in the Haight, shared first place with Tawanda Suessbrich-Joaquim at the 9th Annual Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition in 2021.

Redman, 54, noted that with the rise of Jazzmeia Horn, Veronica Swift and Samara Joy (a finalist at the 2021 Vaughan competition), “it’s becoming a golden age for younger jazz vocalists,” Redman said. “I mean, female jazz vocalists are on fire. Cécile McLorin Salvant is one of the greatest of all time.”

What instantly attracted him to Cavassa’s voice was the “intimacy and vulnerability in her expression,” he said. “There’s something about her sense of melody and phrasing, the texture and mood she evokes. There’s an emotional intimacy in her sound, and a rawness and directness too.”

Judging by “where are we,” interacting with Cavassa in the studio also elicited a different side of Redman, as he plays with a tenderness and delicacy that hasn’t been a hallmark of his sound. The 30-year stretch between their competition triumphs speaks to a generational divide that he found bracing in the studio, “where sometimes she suggested some things that on the surface seemed so basic and simplistic the first response is ‘No, that’s not going to work,’ and then it turns out to be brilliant,” he said.