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Wilkins clearly has a vision, at once serious and sensuous. Omega teems with rage and reflection, meditative musicality and expressive intensity, and a sturdy technical bravura which invariably serves the integrity of the compositional and conceptual whole rather than indulging a blowing session hubris. On the elegiac “Ferguson — An American Tradition” and the alternately turbulent and melodically gutsy “Mary Turner — An American Tradition” (about a savage 1918 lynching which inspired anti-lynching legislation), social and racial issues enter into Wilkins’ contextual scenario, albeit through a strictly instrumental filter. His melancholically sweet ballad “The Dreamer” pays homage to early NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPHFUNxLRD0
The engaging “Warriors” opens the album with its hypnotic motif as intro-outro, detouring briefly from the purely acoustic quartet setting into an echo-flecked segue, an emotional gear-shift moment. History and idiom are in flux, and in hand. At times, Wilkins’ writing and ensemble persona recall the flowing energies of Keith Jarrett’s late-’70s “Scandinavian” quartet with Jan Garbarek, whereas other references update Afro-centric, post-free and hard-bop modalities.
“Omega,” an apt closer, is a dynamically rangy mini-epic with a suspended finale suggesting more to come. Much more: Omega holds promise as one of 2020’s most significant debuts.