Brooklyn-based alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins mightily impressed critics with 2020's Omega. His wispy yet resonant tone revealed a wildly inventive soloist with an advanced compositional facility executed with authority by his quartet -- pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Daryl Johns, and drummer/percussionist Kweku Sumbry. That group returns on The 7th Hand to ask an audacious question across seven tunes: What would happen if God joined the band? This hour-long suite of seven stand-alone movements investigates the space between two existential poles: the abundance of sacred presence and the nihilistic poverty of nothingness. The music on the provocative The 7th Hand moves through evolutionary stages. As it plays, elegantly rendered post-bop embraces harmonic modalism, then develops outward in the echolalia of free improvisation. In considering his existential question, Wilkins pondered the biblical significance of the number six, which represents the maximum potential of human possibility. He wondered that if the band actively sought divine intervention as an intended part of their creative process, would God's spirit, the heavenly seventh element, possess and guide them?
The 7th Hand is a major work. It travels dazzlingly from tranquility and comfort to ambivalence, restlessness, and impatience before it engages re-entry, rebirth, and transcendence. This band understands that Wilkins' bold question may be unanswerable, but they play as if they know. They commit to asking it with music-making as compelling and inspired as it is exploratory and dazzling.
| A1 | Emanation |
| A2 | Don't Break |
| B1 | Fugitive Ritual, Selah |
| B2 | Shadow |
| C1 | Witness |
| C2 | Lighthouse |
| D1 | Lift |
