Joe Lovano, Julian Lage, Asante Santi Debriano, Will Calhoun

CD version. Paramount Quartet introduces a new band led by saxophonist Joe Lovano, with guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Asante Santi Debriano and drummer Will Calhoun. Lovano calls the name a statement of intent. "I feel like at this point I'm on the rise," he says, decades and dozens of leader dates into his career. The programme joins five of his originals with two pieces by composers close to him, and moves between open free playing, grooves and ballads.

Lovano plays tenor saxophone, G mezzo soprano saxophone and tárogató, the Hungarian wooden reed instrument. The four players span several generations and come from different backgrounds. Calhoun, for one, is known beyond jazz as the drummer of the rock group Living Colour. The album was recorded in February 2025 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, a few days after a concert in London. Gérard de Haro engineered the session and Manfred Eicher produced it. It follows Lovano's ECM work with Trio Tapestry, his trio with Marilyn Crispell and Carmen Castaldi, and with the Marcin Wasilewski Trio.

The album opens with Charlie Haden's First Song, introduced by Lage alone on guitar before the tenor states the minor theme. Lady Day, Wayne Shorter's homage to Billie Holiday, brings a long, gently developed tenor solo and some of Lage's finest playing on the date. Lovano's own Amsterdam, first heard on Flights of Fancy in 2001, and The Great Outdoors push into free territory. In The Call the mezzo soprano sings over bowed bass drones and percussion, and the closing Congregation is a relaxed, gospel-tinged blues.

Most reviews were warm. In The Guardian, which made it jazz album of the month, John Fordham called it "a late-career triumph from a tireless maestro of the saxophone". The Financial Times had heard hints of Americana over a modernist core at the London concert. Not everyone was convinced. Writing in Jazz Journal in July 2026, Michael Tucker found much of it static and called the record "a curate's egg of an album", while praising Lovano on Lady Day.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2855, released in May 2026.