Saxophonist Eric Wyatt, a brawny Brooklynite with a heart of gold, uses this date to honor his parents, touch on touchstones, and walk down memory lane with his bandmates.
He doesn't feign nostalgic sentiments or lean on sappy ideals, but there are clear echoes of the past in his instruments and the stories they tell. Opening on pianist Benito Gonzalez's "E-Brother," the first of three numbers influenced by Wyatt's mother's passing, this band wastes no time establishing a take-no-prisoners approach to music-making.
The two other pieces honoring her—the bounding cut-and-slash title track, asserting the new heavenly home for the family's late matriarch, and "A Psalm For Phennie," a cathartic outpouring with a spiritually-paved entrance—come at her life force in different yet complementary ways.
