Written by Jim Hynes:
“There are a series of firsts for veteran saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and multiple Grammy Award-winning Joshua Redman’s Where Are We as it’s his debut for Blue Note Records, his first album built around a vocalist, the first time he’s ever written lyrics, and the first time the trio that backs him had ever played together. Redman taps the young emotive New Orleans-based vocalist Gabrielle Cavassa, and they began to collaborate and select material remotely during the pandemic, with Redman eventually arriving in New Orleans to record, having selected the backing instrumentalists, all of whom he had played with one-time or another but never as a unit. In fact, drummer Brian Blade, bassist Joe Sanders, and pianist Aaron Parks join together for the first time here.
These ballads are like a tour of the U.S.A. with socially conscious and historical references as well. Guests were chosen accordingly – guitarists Kurt Rosenwinkel (“Streets of Philadelphia”) and Peter Bernstein (‘Manhattan”), Chicago born and raised vibraphonist Joel Ross (“Chicago Blues”) and New Orleans trumpeter Nicholas Payton (“Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?”). If one were to quickly look at the set list, they might draw parallels to the commentary of singer-songwriters such as Springsteen or Guthrie, but Redman uses two mashups that invoke legendary jazz masters and one that is most surprising.
The album opens with Redman unaccompanied improvising the strains of “This Land Is Your Land” which segues into his lone original “After Minneapolis (face toward mo[u}rning)” which introduces Cavassa in the dark elegy for George Floyd, originally composed as an instrumental tune, with lyrics (“Knee on neck, near naked night, colors cleave”) emerging a year and a half later. Redman colors Cavassa’s somber vocals with flashes of anger and chaos in his solos. His horn blends beautifully with Rosenwinkel’s guitar on Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” with both framing Cavassa’s initially delicate vocal that grows brighter as the tune evolves. “Chicago Blues” is the first of the mashups, originally envisioned as a modern-day approach to Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing’s “Goin’ to Chicago.” While they’ve incorporated a bluesy element, Cavassa transforms it intimately, infusing harmonic and melodic motifs from Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago,” which, like Ross’ vibraphone, weave in and around the bluesy aspects. It’s a tune one would never associate with a ballad, so the sleight of hand is quite impressive.
Aside from Redman’s solo intros, “Baltimore,” written by the classically influenced songwriter Gabriel Kahane, is one of three fully instrumental tunes with some of Redman’s most inspired moments, proving a feature for Sanders and Parks as well. Later, Bernstein and Redman deliver flowing statements on the Rodgers and Hart standard “Manhattan” and Coltrane’s classic “Alabama.” The latter is one of a three-part sequence that exposes the widely discussed duality of the South with Redman’s brief solo intro of “Alabama” leading to Cavassa and Redman’s sax brilliantly duetting on “The Stars Fell on Alabama,” concluding with the band’s lengthy and poignant rendering of Coltrane’s tune, making this sequence a true highlight. The other mashups are “My Heart in San Francisco” with Monk’s “San Francisco Holiday;” and “That’s New England” which has touches of Charles Ives’ “Three Places in New England” and a rare Betty Carter song, “New England.”
Cavassa, Redman, and band wring every ounce of beauty in their nuanced reading of Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” Cavassa sings “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” with the requisite measure of yearning, with Payton accenting her aching vocal in his signature high-pitched approach. The three of them build a familiar NOLA motif toward the end, the blending of her voice with the two horns creating stellar harmonics. The closing title track invokes subtle bossa nova with Cavassa on guitar as she poses the titular rhetorical question.
Elegant, deeply emotional, and seemingly understated, the end result is somewhat akin to a provocative singer-songwriter, suggesting that we ask ourselves just where the current state of America is and where are we in relation to it. In that sense the geographic theme assumes much more gravitas, the album becoming far more than simply a pleasing set of ballads.”
Source: Glide Magazine