Immanuel Wilkins Quartet at Ronnie Scott’s — compressed energy of a band on the road

American saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins is part of a new generation of jazz musicians confidently fusing large chunks of African-American music into an organic whole. Wilkins stands in the lineage of Kenny Garrett and John Coltrane, but he articulates with the rhythmic awareness of hip-hop and R&B, and pulls the elements together in his own unique way.

This feisty one-night stand in London, featuring his working quartet, was part of an extensive European tour; the band played in Warsaw the night before and were due to fly out after the show for six gigs in Spain. At Ronnie Scott’s, across two virtually uninterrupted sets, they exhibited the compressed energy of a band on the road.

The evening began with pianist Micah Thomas unaccompanied, introducing the central theme of “Waiting” from the club’s concert grand. The pensive motif had a discordant upper-register tail that Thomas let hang before repeating it in a different key. The audience gripped, the rest of the band came on stage after a few minutes. Kweku Sumbry fired a loose roll of drums, bassist Rick Rosato alternated counterpoint with swing and Wilkins played with purpose and a pithy tone.

The seven-part Waiting Suite, based on a collaboration with Sidra Bell Dance, is full of twists, turns and reintroduced motifs. It began with a loose-limbed swagger that let the band limber up and establish the quartet’s aesthetic core. Wilkins alternated precisely syncopated patterns and scales with quick-fire runs, low-register growls and phonics. Thomas probed the piano’s middle range with taut lines, contrapuntal figures and a series of block chords. Bass and drums coaxed and cajoled with focus and power.

As the suite unfolded, a bustle of rimshots locked into figured bass and a complex repeating pattern had a hypnotic effect. The tempo accelerated, drums rattled and rolled and then, all of a sudden, sax and piano were playing a ballad with a minor-key theme. As the work progressed in a continuous stream, an upscale waltz morphed into a modern jazz bounce, the ballad returned, there was a burst of free jazz and the piece ended with a long, sensuous fade.

The second set was based on the 2020 album Omega. Thomas and Sumbry both featured on Wilkins’s debut Blue Note release, and at this gig only Rosato was new. “Warriors” opened the set, followed by “Ferguson” and “Grace and Mercy”. Here they were conjoined in a continuous set; once again, duets and trios emerged, and moods and tempo changed. As before, soloists probed harmony and rhythm and, conducted by the impressive Sumbry, dug deep and took wing. The drummer’s rhythmic independence and combination of jazz subtlety and hip-hop power gripped throughout.

The performance closed with a pulsating ebb-and-flow vamp. A quiet cymbal ping was the final note before a rapt audience stood and shouted for more.

★★★★☆ 

ronniescotts.co.uk