Joseph Herbst: This Is Our Environment
NextLevel

The debut album by saxophonist Joseph Herbst is noteworthy for both its themes—social justice and respect for the environment—and the musical treatment they catalyzed into being. Of course, no reasonable person would argue against the need for racial equality and treating the planet with care (even if countless examples exist of individuals and corporations not acting in accordance with such principles); that said, such themes never suffer from being articulated and disseminated once more, and to Herbst's credit they're expressed forcefully but not stridently.

Still, what recommends This Is Our Environment most is the way Herbst translates those ideas into a musical form that's compelling, imaginative, and original. Grounding his fresh take on contemporary jazz is a versatile sextet featuring the leader on alto and soprano and Evan Taylor on trumpet and flugelhorn alongside pianist Luther S. Allison, guitarist Peter Martin, bassist Liany Mateo, and drummer Zach McKinney. Enhancing that instrumental base, however, are voices, singer Aubrey Johnson on six of the fourteen tracks and spoken word artists—Dasan Ahanu, Cynthia ‘THiA' Sharpe, Yexandra 'Yex' Diaz, and RaShad Eas—who contribute, separately, to seven. Tracks featuring the latter four alternate with the non-spoken word pieces, the result a thought-provoking (if slightly overlong) tapestry. There's contrast aplenty with respect to mood, dynamics, and style, yet the project feels cohesive when its parts are conceptually linked.

The album begins pensively with “They Say There Are Beautiful Trees,” Herbst's strong writing boding well for the material ahead, especially when Johnson pairs with the leader's alto for a unison voicing of the opening statement. In some respects, the track acts as a showcase for the sextet, given the solo space allocated to Mateo and Herbst and how deftly the ensemble executes the leader's intricate structures. The sextet shows itself throughout to be flexible, responsive to mood, and sympathetic to Herbst's concept. The players segue confidently between aggressive blowing and passages of a more sultry nature, and it's not uncommon for a piece to progress through moments of frenzy and then come out the other side voicing melodies at a hush. Individual players distinguish themselves with solos whilst delivering them with concision. While she's not a formal group member, Johnson is as integral to the pieces on which she appears as the others. The yearning ballad “Is this my fault?” and soul-jazz workout “Iron Eyes” would hardly be as entrancing were her lustrous voice not included (the same might be said of Allison's funky Rhodes playing on the latter).

The writing method adopted for the spoken word pieces warrants mention. Each speaker wrote the texts they present after being given the prompt “What does the environment mean to you?”; after they recorded their parts, Herbst composed the accompanying music. For the lament “Momma Nature,” Ahanu's metaphor-rich text presents earth as a life-sustaining source of nourishment we've abused and taken for granted (“Why do we treat this world so disposable”), a theme Sharpe revisits as powerfully two tracks later in “Mama E.” Shifting gears, Diaz addresses racial injustice head-on in “Erring of the Revolution Pt. 1” whereas Eas argues for a personal reexamination of values in “Simple Life.”

February 2021