"After the brilliant finale at the 2019 Willisau Jazz Festival with saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and drummer Chad Taylor, Lucerne journalist Pirmin Bossart wrote: "The music sought neither to preach nor impress, instead revealing itself as pure, spirited intensity. 'Yeah! Yeah!' James Brandon cries after the final note of 'Willisee' adding a jubilant 'Wow!'". The duo had just finished a track which Dewey Redman and Ed Blackwell played on the same stage in 1980, a stage where Max Roach & Archie Shepp also wrote jazz history. Lewis and Taylor pay tribute to this legacy and conjure up the spirit of Great Black Music in the very first piece with an homage to John Coltrane.

New Yorker James Brandon Lewis has attracted attention in recent years with his album UnRuly Manifesto. The record was listed among the best new releases of 2019 in the USA. The "New York Times" attests him a great musical autonomy: "James Brandon Lewis, a jazz saxophonist in his 30s, raw-toned but measured, doesn't sound steeped in current jazzacademy values and isn't really coming from a free-improvising perspective. There's an independence about him." The drummer Chad Taylor comes from Chicago and has played with Fred Anderson, Pharoah Sanders, Marc Ribot, Malachi Favors and Nicole Mitchel. On Intakt Records he plays on the live album with Aruan Ortiz and Brad Jones.

Bossart writes: "The two musicians let us hear the great breath of an essential jazz tradition, its clarity, raw beauty and urgency shining through, even in the melting pot of contemporary jazz debates. The musicians are not stuck in a version of the past. At every second they are part of the musical process, which shapes itself and pulses with their experiences of the here and now. This is about a continuum, occurring yesterday, today and tomorrow. Why else would jazz have retained till today its transformative power?" "-Intakt

"Following up the highly successful Radiant Imprints album, hailed by JazzTrail as one of the best of 2018, the dynamic duo of saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and drummer Chad Taylor is back with Live in Willisau, an eight-track session captured in 2019 at the 45th Willisau Jazz Festival, Switzerland.

The first two pieces, "Twenty Four" and "Radiance", were drawn from their debut album. Integrating Coltrane's "Giant Steps" and "26-2", the former sparkles with the energy of Lewis' propagative rhythmic figures and Taylor's percolating sounds, which includes wildly active snare, rolling thunder toms and cymbal scintillation. At some point, both musicians express their thoughts alone. This piece segues into the next one without interruption. It's a sort of work song introduced by Coltrane's "Seraphic Light" and containing gospel elements in the melody and beneficial changes of beat along the way. It bears some similarity in tone with Mal Waldron's relentless "Watakushi No Sekai", heightened here by a flawless rhythmic sense and undulating fervor.

The contemplative "Come Sunday" by Duke Ellington, stripped down to its bear essentials, along with the duo's "With Sorrow Lonnie", feel more spacious and relaxing as they are rhythmically conducted by the chimelike timbres of the African mbira.

Elasticity and robustness are essential factors in the unfiltered approach adopted by these creative minds. Take, for example, "Imprints", whose sinewy start highlights an empowering tenor that etches sinuous figures and zigzagging lines on the entangling percussive tapestries. It's great to see Lewis chaining elliptical phrases and pinning them down with low-pitched notes for stabilization. Also, Dewey Redman's "Willisee", my favorite track on the album, carries musical farsightedness. We find them excavating confrontational, urgent sounds - Coltrane invocations, blues tones, free bop discharges, and an auspicious mix of funk and hip-hop by the end.

Delivered raw, the music of Lewis and Taylor is an impressive communion of technique, pure energy and sound, with both musicians orchestrating ideas not only with vitality but also with a refined taste. Recently, I've no idea of a better horn that mingles so beautifully with lyrical, mindful rhythms."-Filipe Freitas, Jazz Trails