Jazz
Mack Avenue Records · 25 September 2026
“His Eye Is on the Sparrow” (3:20) is a traditional gospel hymn, and it is the first thing you hear on Caged Bird. Opening a debut with a hymn instead of a standard is a decision, and it fits what Ekep Nkwelle does across these nine tracks: she comes at the African-American songbook through the church door rather than the club one.
Track two, “Caged Bird” (4:48), is Abbey Lincoln’s and gives the album its title. Nkwelle starts it on wordless vocal over Brian Richburg Jr.’s drums alone, with Luther Allison’s piano and Russell Hall’s bass held back. She drops the crescendos Lincoln built into it and saves her one climb for the end, so that when it arrives it carries a different kind of weight.
Two pianists play on the record, which is unusual for a debut. Julius Rodriguez takes “Amazon Farewell” (4:57), by Djavan, where Richburg’s percussion works in a Brazilian key, and “Good Morning, Heartache” (5:43), the textbook ballad she risks most on and pulls off. Pharoah Sanders’ “The Creator Has a Master Plan” (6:38) becomes a slow spiritual R&B ballad, and the album closes with “See See Rider” (4:38), a blues played with no interest in sounding old.
What is not visible yet is Nkwelle as the author of her own programme. Nine tracks resting on other people’s songs mean competing with Lincoln, with Billie Holiday and with Sanders on their own ground, and she wins those exchanges only half the time: her “Good Morning, Heartache” is excellent, her Sanders the most conventional of the many versions around. “The Sad Ones” (8:32) is the longest track and the only one where the quartet gets room to open out, and it lands seventh, once the record has already decided on its tone. At twenty-seven, with a CV running through Kenny Barron and David Murray and a training at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and at Howard under Cyrus Chestnut, original material is the step still to come.
Nine tracks, out on Mack Avenue Records on 25 September.
Rating: 7.0/10
Text by Aina Torrents