He won jazz’s greatest performance honor, The Thelonious Monk International Competition in 2014, underscoring his promise, now fully realized. The tune exemplifies Hill’s compositional gifts, crafting edge-of-the-precipice pathways for improvs, suspended by oddly beguiling melodies. On “The Believer” everyone steps out hot and gives it up, as believers in, if nothing else, their extraordinary collective power which, by compounding exponentially, suggests a pipeline to some higher power. This is music you feel in your bones, your whole being, such is its insinuating power. At other times, it’s as if his profuse ideas are spilling out over the edges of a sentence.

To me, his linear speed doesn’t feel gratuitous or showy, rather it is breathtaking – burning with purpose, like a meteor striving for an explosive destiny. If you haven’t heard him, Francies is a revelation, perhaps even if you have. Vibist Joel Ross and pianist James Francies suggest, in their heavily populated lines, the bustle of the hoi polloi, and the pianist especially conveys a boiling tension in his hurtling momentum surges. Tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III enters a quietly enchanting storyteller but inevitably lifts us to cathartic cries of betrayal of justice, of true law and order. The floating, portentous “Intro” arrests our attention, and the ensuing “Law & Order” unfurls waves a of witness, drama and testament. And it’s virtually all performed live in concert, a testament to the high art of the improviser (A series of studio-recorded a cappella solo pieces allows each of the sextet’s sidemen to to stand up and speak his peace.). Here he assembles a group of band leaders (several Blue Note label artists) and the quality quotient spikes.

Chicago-native Hill is already established as one of the most talented and resourceful trumpeter-composers in jazz. This stunning album amounts to an artist replanting in a profoundly fertile motherlode of his evolution, by reinterpreting the material of his very first album. Marquis Hill – New Gospel Revisited (Edition) Album cover courtesy Marquis Hill – Bandcamp

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