Immanuel Wilkins hit the stage at 2am late Saturday night, wearing a puffy parka to spite the blazing hot back room of Baby’s All Right, a small venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After seeing a dozen performances over two nights, mostly standing room only, my lower back was screaming. But when Wilkins and his quartet roared into their hour-long set it reoriented my senses away from my middle-aged pains and towards the beseeching tone of his alto saxophone. It was a major highlight of this year’s Winter Jazzfest, and better than a trip to the chiropractor.
Now in its 21st year, it hasn’t swayed from its mission to showcase envelope-pushing improvised music that was not being served by NYC’s major institutions like Jazz at Lincoln Center. But this scruffy upstart founded by Brice Rosenbloom has had so much success that it has become an institution of its own, spurring JALC to launch the competing Unity Festival in 2024 on the same dates - which provides a more wide-ranging sample of contemporary jazz than their usual programming, which emphasizes straightahead swing. The fact that the multitalented cellist and composer Tomeka Reid appeared at both festivals this year is an encouraging marker of Winter Jazzfest’s influence.
At the Unity Festival she led a septet in a Duke Ellington tribute, which I wasn’t able to attend. But I saw her in two different configurations at Winter Jazzfest - first as part of The Hemphill Stringet, which performs nimble string arrangements of Julius Hemphill compositions, and then in her enthralling quartet - which has a new album out on February 13th - dance! skip! hop!. For those interested in deep Old New lore - I named my substack after Reid’s album of the same name. The Hemphill Stringet is made up of Reid on cello, Sam Bardfeld and Curtis Stewart on violin, and Stephanie Griffin on viola, and they put out one of my favorite albums of 2025, an ear-opening act of curation that focuses on Julius Hemphill the composer, excavating works he wrote for the World Saxophone Quartet and Kronos Quartet, showing the range possible within his grooving hard blues. And the bright instrumentation brings out the lyricism in his writing, when he is best known for his fusion of avant-garde and funk forms (listen to his solo debut Dogon A.D. at all costs). Their set pulled out all the warmth and beauty in Hemphill’s spiky compositions.
Reid’s own group, which features Mary Halvorson on guitar, Jason Roebke on bass (and portable cassette player), and Tomas Fujiwara on drums, is a stringtet by other means. The Old New album liner notes described the group as “essentially a string band, an electro-acoustic hybrid in which any player might take on bass, melodic or rhythmic responsibilities at any given time.” They are hard driving and constantly surprising in how the instruments ebb and flow. “dance! skip! hop!” sounds like a fuzzed out jump blues with Halvorson, Roebke, and Reid plucking sinuous lines that blur together in a toe-tapping fog. It was the first time I saw them since their burning performance at the Long Play festival, and they seemed tighter than ever here. One of the finest working groups anywhere.
Reid was the highlight of my 2014 Winter Jazzfest, when I saw her in a 3am set with Craig Taborn and Ches Smith. Taborn said they were recording an album with ECM after the gig, and two years later the album is out now under the title Dream Archives. It’s a smoky ambient synth mood music that is imposing, challenging, and absolutely gorgeous.
There were two Winter Jazzfest marathons this year, with Friday night in the West Village of Manhattan, and Saturday night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My fest started with an ebullient performance by vibraphonist Patricia Brennan and her Tentet at Le Poisson Rouge, playing selections from her new album Of the Near and Far, which translated celestial forms into music and has continued to grow on me all year, like the slowly expanding universe. Brennan writes that she “developed a process that allowed me to collect pitch and numerical data from constellations. I overlaid the shapes of constellations onto a circle of fifths, intrigued by whether the symmetry of the constellations could translate into musical symmetry—whether harmonic or melodic.” The results are springlike, the band interlocking into complex multirhythms over blasts of sci-fi bleeps and bloops from electronics artist Arktureye.
The David Murray Quartet had more earthy concerns. Performing in support of their lovely 2025 album Birdly Serenade, this set was a showcase for Murray’s bluesy tenor sax licks that filled the high-ceilinged room at DROM. I was taken with the unabashedly horny “Oiseau de paradis”, for which Murray invited his wife - writer and fashion designer Francesca Cignelli - to sing her poem (in French) about a long distance relationship. For a festival that often books heady music, it was refreshing to hear something so straightforwardly carnal, and fully supported by Murray’s passionate backing.
I stuck around at DROM to see the James Brandon Lewis Trio with James on tenor sax, Chad Taylor on drums, and Josh Werner on bass. I interviewed Lewis last year about the formation of this band, which released Apple Cores early in 2025. It was a fully improvised piece other than a cover of Ornette Coleman’s “Broken Shadows”, and they have a telepathic connection and dogged intensity, working each groove down to the bone. They played a version of “Broken Shadows” here, and Denardo Coleman, Ornette’s son and drummer, was in the audience. Amazing to have that kind of history in the room - and he gave James his endorsement after the show, as James excitedly shared on Facebook. There is a true community vibe to the proceedings, with musicians sticking around to catch each other’s shows. I spied trombonist Jacob Garchik (another Old New interviewee) at the Patricia Brennan gig.
On a rainy Saturday the L train had performance anxiety and took a powder for an hour, making me late for the first round of shows. I was able to catch a little glimpse of jazz fusion supergroup Quantum Blues Quartet at Williamsburg Music Hall with guitarist Tisziji Muñoz (from Pharoah Sanders’ band), drummer Will Calhoun (from Living Color), and keyboardist Paul Shaffer (yes, from Late Night With David Letterman). Jamaladeen Tacuma was advertised on bass, but he wasn’t able to attend - and I couldn’t identify who replaced him. From the snippet I heard they played searching jazz fusion perfect for getting super high and swaying left-to-right. Not entirely my thing but they were vibing.
More good vibes were had at Loove Annex for the Alden Hellmuth Quartet (plus a cameo by trumpeter Adam O’Farrill). The precociously talented Hellmuth recently graduated from the Herbie Hancock institute at UCLA, led by artistic director (and brilliant trumpeter) Ambrose Akinmusire. She gathered most of the band from her 2024 debut Good Intentions, with Yvonne Rogers on piano, Timothy Angulo on drums and Kanoa Mendenhall on bass - all musicians to watch in 2026 and beyond. They played some new tunes that I believe will be included on her 2026 release Tether, as well as some ones off of Good Intentions, like the spring-loaded Whirl. Hellmuth namechecked Anthony Braxton as the subject of her recent studies, and they conjured some of that master’s organized cacophony and lissome harmony.
Adam O’Farrill stood in with Hellmuth for a few lysergic tunes, and also headlined his own set a few hours later with his gemlike ELEPHANT quartet. Yvonne Rogers returned, plus Walter Stinson on double bass and Russell Holzman on drums. Their album, also called ELEPHANT, is out March 20th. The stated influences are 20th century minimalism and contemporary dance music, and these tunes have a drone and a pulse, chamber-like compositions that can morph from Steve Reich to EDM, and then all of a sudden you are dropped into the smoky environs of a David Lynch/Angelo Badalementi vamp, who O’Farrill stated was one of his major influences. O’Farrill is somehow able to snatch at all of these threads and twine them into compositions of lithe grace.
The festival took place right after the murder of Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, and words of resistance and revolution were repeated from room to room. That included Luke Stewart and his Silt Trio (Chad Taylor, drums, and Brian Settles tenor saxophone), a meditative and heavy performance of understatement and nuance. Stewart asked for acknowledgement of the dire circumstances America is fighting against, and proceeded to play tunes with a freedom and a spirit that displayed what is worth fighting for.
Immanuel Wilkins asked the crowd to raise their hands for the revolution, and then tore into a set of covers and originals, including a gorgeous version of Alice Coltrane’s “Charanam”. His quartet of Micah Thomas (keyboard, looking a lot like David Mamet), Ryoma Takenaga (bass), and Kweku Sumbry (drums) were completely locked in, playing with abandon and grace. My favorite moment was when he called up Elena Pinderhughes for a flute/sax duet of ethereal beauty. To have people shouting with joy over a jazz flute solo at 3am in Williamsburg is the kind of unexpected moment that only Winter Jazzfest can provide.
All photos by R. Emmet Sweeney
Really loved reading about the Hemphill Stringtet excavating those WSQ arrangements. The way string instruments can bring out the lyrical side of compositions that are usually driven by horns and rythym section is something I wish more jazz groups explored. I caught Reid's quartet a few years back and that cello/guitar/bass interplay you mentioned creates such a thick, almost orchestral texture that most jazz quartets cant touch.