January 7, 2022
Alto saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins has released “Don’t Break,” the 2nd single to be revealed from his forthcoming album The 7th Hand due out January 28. The track features Wilkins’ quartet with Micah Thomas on piano, Daryl Johns on bass, and Kweku Sumbry on drums plus the Farafina Kan percussion ensemble. Watch the video for the two singles “Emanation/Don’t Break” directed by interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith.
Earlier this week on NPR Morning Edition, critic Nate Chinen named The 7th Hand one of his most anticipated releases of 2022, calling Wilkins “one of the most compelling instrumentalists in improvised music.” In a rave 4-star MOJO review of the album, Charles Waring wrote “Even though his career is just taking off, Wilkins already looks set to join the small pantheon of great alto saxophonists that includes Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Eric Dolphy and Jackie McLean… ‘The 7th Hand’ embodies contemporary jazz at its most thrilling.” It’s the follow-up to Wilkins’ widely acclaimed debut Omega which was named the #1 Jazz Album of 2020 by Giovanni Russonello in The New York Times.
Wilkins’ music is filled with empathy and conviction, bonding arcs of melody and lamentation to pluming gestures of space and breath. The 7th Hand is a seven-movement suite of new original pieces that explores relationships between presence and nothingness. “I wanted to write a preparatory piece for my quartet to become vessels by the end of the piece, fully,” says the Brooklyn-based, Philadelphia-raised artist who Pitchfork said “composes ocean-deep jazz epics.”
While writing, Wilkins began viewing each movement as a gesture bringing his quartet closer to complete vesselhood, where the music would be entirely improvised, channeled collectively. “It’s the idea of being a conduit for the music as a higher power that actually influences what we’re playing,” he says. The 7th Hand derives its title from a question steeped in Biblical symbolism: If the number 6 represents the extent of human possibility, Wilkins wondered what it would mean — how it would sound — to invoke divine intervention and allow that seventh element to possess his quartet.
Throughout the album Wilkins and his bandmates reveal their collective truth by peeling themselves back, layer by layer, movement by movement. “Each movement chips away at the band until the last movement — just one written note,” says Wilkins. “The goal of what we’re all trying to get to is nothingness, where the music can flow freely through us.”
IMMANUEL WILKINS – 2022 TOUR DATES:
January 27: PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA
January 28: The Side Door, Old Lyme, CT
January 29: Harlem Stage, New York, NY
February 18: SFJAZZ, San Francisco, CA
February 20: Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay, CA
February 21: Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz, CA
February 22: Portland Jazz Festival, Portland, OR
February 23: Just Jazz Series, Los Angeles, CA
February 26: Kennedy Center, Washington DC
March 3: Bimhuis, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
March 4: Paradox Tilburg, Tilbourg, The Netherlands
March 5: Lantaren Venster, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
March 6: DeSingel, Antwerp, Belgium
March 8: Porgy & Bess, Vienna, Austria
March 9: Jazz Club Unterfahrt, Munich, Germany
March 10: Jazz Club Singen, Singen, Germany
March 11: Jazz School Basel Club, Basel, Switzerland
March 12: Jazz Club Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
March 13: You Must Believe in Spring Festival, Mantova, Italy
March 14: Ronnie Scott’s, London, UK
March 15: Le Duc des Lombards, Paris, France
March 16: Le Duc des Lombards, Paris, France
March 17: 30CC, Leuven, Belgium
March 19: Terrassa Jazz, Terrassa, Spain
March 20: Tempo Club, Madrid, Spain
March 22: Teatro Victoria Eugenia, San Sebastian, Spain
March 23: ZigZag Club, Berlin, Germany
March 24: Halle424, Hamburg, Germany
March 25: Transition Festival, Utrecht, The Netherlands
