Following 2020's excellent quartet album, Molecular, saxophonist James Brandon Lewis returns with a very different ensemble, the Red Lily quintet, though the link between the two is the outstanding drummer Chad Taylor. In come cornetist Kirk Knuffe, cellist Chris Hoffman and double bassist William Parker, making a band with talent in abundance.

More to the point, they achieve an enviable cohesion amid the quality of the individual contributions on a repertoire that pays tribute to George Washington Carver, the visionary African-American agricultural scientist whose pioneering work in the early 20th century has a significant bearing on modern day dilemmas over sustainability,

Lewis' songs move from the intensely vibrant to the deeply plaintive, and his solid, hefty tone makes for a formidable frontline with Knuffe's punchy brass while Parker and Taylor provide a rhythmic base that has a very danceable, African pulse as well as a provocatively loose, freewheeling sense of time that enables the band to go ‘out’ while nonetheless keeping locked into a strong collective forward motion. If there is one salient reference it is perhaps Old And New Dreams, a legendary band that featured another one of Lewis' tutors, Charlie Haden.

Then again Lewis' graceful narration at the end of the programme – one of his most beautiful statements being “A seed never ran a race of its choosing, it still blossoms” – also places him in a long lineage of artists who have made very effective use of spoken word. This album provides further confirmation of Lewis' growing artistic stature, as he clearly has important things to say socially, culturally and politically, as well as a creative drive that keeps resulting in one notable recording after another.