Heaven & Earth

Earth is loaded with mentally and emotionally draining songs. ... Heaven, [is] a set of smoother, more cosmic songs that showcase Washington’s ability to pen compositions of awe-inspiring majesty. Even more impressive is the way those two modes occasionally bleed into each other from across the album’s border.

Heaven and Earth is a lengthy album, and one that refuses to shortchange the listener. There is a wealth of ideas on the table here. It takes a musician, composer, and arranger of Washington's caliber to take these ideas and form them into a brilliant collection of performances.

It's easy to get overawed by the sheer magnitude of such a work, but it lives up to the audacious premise grandly.

The music is at turns bewildering, cathartic and questioning throughout; there is no separation. An exceptional record from one of the music world's brightest talents.

Throughout simply titled/simply written tracks like "Lullaby" and "Journey," Washington has astonishingly revealed another element to his budding songcraft.

An album with soul jazz, spiritual jazz, jazz-funk, electro-soul and many more genre-busting approaches incorporated across 16 wondrous pieces, aspects of free rhythms nestling next to vintage seventies soul sounds, all evolved effortlessly for the 21st Century. ... You won’t hear another record like it this, or maybe any, year.

Washington’s strengths have never been clearer. His sound is sinewy and centered, his rhythmic footing sure. And he’s a catharsis engine who also knows when to shrewdly dial it back.

This is a record that throbs and vibrates with an infectious pulse even when the instrumentalists aim for the outer reaches of lightning-speed look-at-me flurries of virtuoso showing-off.

More than the spiritual feel of Impulse! releases by Sanders or Coltrane, this music recalls the groove oriented work of Turrentine, Idris Muhammad and Grover Washington Jr for CTI and Kudu. It’s warm weather music, made to be played through speakers propped in open windows, facing the street. [Jul 2018, p.58]

A conceptual double album exploring earth (reality) and heaven (idealisation), is perhaps unlikely to sway the old guard, but it pushes forward with a purposeful vitality that was at times missing from his debut album, The Epic.

Heaven and Earth is more a refinement of the ideas expressed on The Epic than an entirely new paradigm. There is less wandering, more focus, more inquiry and directed movement, as well as an abundance of colorful tonal and harmonic contrasts.

Washington continues to explore a sweet spot between artistry and approachability. Whether his success will lead audiences to further explore music that usually exists on the fringes is an interesting question. What is more certain is the quality and accessibility of his own music.

Despite the sheer weight of material on offer you’ll struggle to find an inch of fat. With its forward-thinking, deep-searching nature counterbalanced by a natural warmth and populist, groove-heavy approach, it’s another hugely accomplished work by a man whose prolific run of form shows no signs of abating.

Heaven & Earth is ultimately yet another example of Washington’s incredible prowess behind the saxophone but also as a composer.

On Heaven and Earth there’s a balance between big-stroke conceptualism--the first CD, “Earth,” is meant to represent worldly preoccupations; the second, “Heaven,” explores utopian thought--and the workmanlike reality of collaboration. The two collections don’t vary significantly in terms of sound; instead, they’re a testament to the sturdy rapport of Mr. Washington’s ensemble.

The appetite for Washington’s old-school jazz utopia is a miracle in itself, renewed here.

A series of near-overwhelming musical epiphanies. [Jul 2018, p.94]

Washington's gift for euphonic arrangements and eagerness to explore new forms is evident throughout. [Summer 2018, p.115]

This is the rare jazz record that feels equipped to venture outside the genre's familiar borders and engage with the wider world. [Jul 2018, p.29]