Calling Antonin

James Brandon Lewis and Red Lily’s Calling Antonín is a jazz tribute to Antonín Dvořák, released October 23, 2026, through TAO Forms. Following Jesup Wagon and For Mahalia, With Love, the third Red Lily album brings together Dvořák-inspired compositions, spirituals, and exploratory improvisation across a nine-track, approximately 52-minute CD and digital program. Its defining quality is dialogue: rather than simply translating classical pieces into jazz, Lewis places Dvořák’s melodies alongside the spiritual and folk traditions that resonate with his own musical background. The ensemble expands to a sextet, with Lewis’s tenor saxophone joined by Kirk Knuffke’s cornet, Melanie Dyer’s viola, Tomeka Reid’s cello, Joshua Abrams’s bass, and Chad Taylor’s drums, balancing chamber-like textures with forceful grooves and open improvisation.

“Lento” draws on Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 12, the “American” quartet, while “Going Home” reworks the Largo theme from the New World Symphony through buoyant rhythm and call-and-response phrasing. Spiritual-based pieces including “Spirit of the Living God” and “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me” deepen that conversation, while “Dilemma of Hearts” moves from string drones and a creeping bass line into turbulent ensemble interplay before returning toward a New World theme. The title track carries material from a Slavonic Dance into driving hard bop, and the closing “O’ Rebicku,” based on a Czech folk song, offers a contrasting, non-improvised ending. Throughout, the strings and horns connect the album’s historical sources to the musicians’ present-tense interaction, treating Dvořák’s music as material for discovery rather than reverent reproduction.