Whichever way you look at it, 2024 was a big year for Blue Note. The legendary label celebrated its 85th anniversary, cementing its role as the indisputable face of jazz, forever synonymous with some of the best loved and most enduring artists and recordings from throughout the music’s history. But it was also an opportunity to prove that it has never been a relic of a so-called golden age. As part of those celebrations, an all-star collective of contemporary Blue Note recording artists was assembled to showcase the vibrant, modern energy the label has always championed.

Originally coming together under the name The Blue Note Quintet, the group boasted some major names who had already blazed on recent releases on the label: pianist (and musical director) Gerald Clayton, alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, vibraphonist Joel Ross, drummer Kendrick Scott and bassist Matt Brewer. From the outset, they shared a strong sympatico vibe. Wilkins said: “I’ve had a deep musical connection with Joel that we have been building for the past nine years, and we both have grown up listening to Gerald, Matt and Kendrick in different bands.”

In January 2024, the quintet embarked on an ambitious 35-date tour of the US, playing fresh, original compositions. The result of so much time on the road was profoundly transformative. Clayton recalls: “We pushed one another to reach further and further and dig deeper night after night. Over the course of two months, the music expanded in all directions.”

With the music coming alive, the quintet made time in the midst of that tour to hit the studio and document the sounds they were discovering. Then, at the end of that momentous year, the group released an album entitled “Motion I”, presenting seven original tunes captured at those sessions. The new name they chose for the group – Out Of / Into – was an unmistakeable declaration of intent, encapsulating an urge to honour the extraordinary legacy of Blue Note, while forging ahead with questing creativity. “Out Of / Into reflects the evolution of the Blue Note story, and of our sound,” said Scott.

_{Photos: Ryan McNurney, courtesy of Blue Note Records.}

Following the critical success of their first album, Out Of/Into now return with a second volume – “Motion II” – which unveils another six stunning originals recorded during those 2024 studio sessions. Like its predecessor, the album reveals an aesthetic that consciously taps into the extraordinarily fertile period in the md-1960s when Blue Note artists such as Joe Chambers, Bobby Hutcherson, Andrew Hill and Joe Henderson were extending post-bop into exciting new territory – and does so with a bravura 21st century spin.

Wilkins’ composition “Brothers In Arms” kicks things off with an assured and sophisticated theme full of shifting time signatures, before sax, piano and vibes take turns delivering short, concise solos. After each has made three solo statements, there’s a quiet regrouping with plangent electric piano chords and a hushed bass solo, after which the theme is restated slowly and with graceful poise, building to an epic yet wistful climax led by the sax in a searching mood. It’s a playful probing and reimagining of how a jazz tune can be structured.

Clayton’s “Finding Ways” is another interesting construction. A unison theme for horns and vibes ascends a harmonic ladder, with clicking drums and the piano and bass slotting in like supporting rungs. Again, the solos are short and punchy and – at less than five minutes long – the tune is an exercise in economy that foregrounds collective effort, leaving no room for egotistic grandstanding.

Beginning with an unaccompanied bass solo, Brewer’s “Juno” proposes a new kind of ballad. Sighing and delicate, it hangs together around a generous sense of space, filled with surging waves of liquid emotion. Clayton’s “Familiar Route” is a stately affair too. With a harmonic structure hinting at Herbie Hancock’s 1965 Blue Note classic “Maiden Voyage,” its rim-shot rhythm provides gentle but unstoppable forward motion, as an electric piano ripples over patiently laid-out, gently exploratory chords.

Then it’s time to give the drummer some. Scott’s “The Catalyst” is a masterclass in misdirection, with a mischievously off-kilter 4/4 rim-shot suggesting a twitchy syncopation. When the beat drops, it’s a lurching, teasing groove, promising the funk but somehow holding back, never quite fully delivering anything as obvious as an emphasis on the one and three. As a roiling piano solo loosens things up, Scott swings subtly around the beat before the group pull off a perfect live fade out, dropping down to just a heart-beat kick drum outro.

Wrapping up the date is Clayton’s “Nacho Supreme,” in which the quintet most fully acknowledges its debt to that mid-60s Blue Note sound. A sprightly head – light-footed yet tight, and full of sudden, stuttering moments of stop-start tension – seamlessly transitions into up-tempo swing with the bass walking wildly and drums surging ahead. Wilkins’ sax solo is fluid and expressive, Ross goes the full Bobby Hutcherson with a vibes solo that’s mellifluous yet tough, and Clayton’s piano solo is fleet and questing. A final circular phrase is repeated while Scott burns hard with a boisterous drum solo.

At once deeply embedded in the tradition, and tirelessly searching for new forms, Motion II is a tour-de-force of unfettered creativity with a deep, beating heart. As Ross succinctly puts it: “The way the collective keeps the Blue Note legacy going is by unapologetically being true to ourselves.”

Daniel Spicer is a Brighton-based writer, broadcaster and poet with bylines in The Wire, Jazzwise, Songlines and The Quietus. He’s the author of books on German free jazz legend Peter Brötzmann and Turkish psychedelic music.

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_{Header image: Out Of/Into. Photo: Ryan McNurney.}