Jazz
James Brandon Lewis released “Calling Antonín” on 23 October, the third Red Lily album after “Jesup Wagon” (2021) and “For Mahalia, With Love” (2023). It’s out on TAO Forms and is devoted to Antonín Dvořák, specifically to the three years the Czech composer lived and worked in the United States from 1892.
The idea goes back to a call from bassist William Parker, who ten years ago offered him a Dvořák project for the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre. Lewis became its musical director, and the show, “The New World Symphony: Dvořák in America”, opened at La MaMa in New York in March 2016. “Dvořák makes a bold assertion in the late 1800s: he’s telling America where their source material is from,” Lewis says.
All nine pieces are Lewis’s own: variations on Dvořák, tunes inspired by him and others that carry a personal meaning for him. The album takes in “Going Home”, “Lento” and “Finale – Humoresque”, two spirituals (“Spirit of the Living God” and “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me”) and closes with “O’ Rebicku”. Lewis also sings on “Ode to P.L.D.”. “Dilemma of Hearts” came out as the first single in August.
Here Red Lily is a sextet: Lewis on tenor saxophone, Kirk Knuffke on cornet, Melanie Dyer on viola, Tomeka Reid on cello, Joshua Abrams on bass and Chad Taylor on drums. The album was recorded on 7 and 8 October 2025 at Skyline Productions in South Orange, New Jersey, with Paul Wickliffe, and the liner notes are by Michael Beckerman, a Dvořák scholar and dean of the UCLA School of Music.
Text by Aina Torrents