Pianist Micah Thomas has busily, if somewhat quietly, made a name for himself as pianist for sax star Immanuel Wilkins, but it’s his series of records as a leader that have shown him to be a major artist in the making. Though those albums were trio and solo projects, they’ve been leading up to Mountains, the New Yorker’s first album with a larger ensemble.
Joined by Wilkins, saxophonist Nicole Glover, trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, trombonist Caleb Smith, bassist Kanoa Mendenhall, and drummer Kweku Sumbry, Thomas writes more expansively, with grander melodies and more room left in the arrangements for his bandmates to express themselves. He lays out his vision immediately with opening track “Life,” the longest cut on the record. Over the course of its 13:45 running time, it moves from hard bop to postbop to avant-big band and back again, showing off the musicians’ prowess without losing sight of the tune. On “No Answer,” the other epic track, Thomas adds free jazz to the mix, with roiling horn solos driven by frantic drum fills, before the tune fades with his quiet piano coda. Even shorter pieces like “Libre” and “The Mountain” traverse wide territory, shifting from mood to mood as Thomas sees fit.
Mind you, he’s not just cramming tonal shifts on top of each other to prove he’s a master of them all, even if it sounds like it at first listen. Thomas follows his instincts, listening to the song and letting it have what it needs, and his band trusts him enough to follow him down diverse paths. Mountains is colorful, ambitious, and compelling, and if it’s not quite a masterpiece, it certainly clears the field for one.
