John Esposito and A Book of Five Rings
Vulcan
(Sunjump Records)
Free jazz drummers have this method of homing in on a beat like a kid with a magnifying glass stalking a bee. It’s trepidatious, but focused; wary, yet relentless. Peter O’Brien does just so from the start of John Esposito and A Book of Five Rings’s miraculous new two-disc set disc, Vulcan, which joins composer Esposito with top talents like trumpeter Greg Glassman, flautist Mitch Kessler, reed master Stacy Dillard, and violinist/vocalist Rosi Hertlein for a relentlessly adventuresome decade-old set of never less-than-intriguing music. There is no critical bravura in calling this collection an instant classic. It just is—a gift fallen from the stars. Take it and run with it. Could you compare Vulcan—inspired by Miyamoto Musashi and featuring, in live performance, video by Laura Steele—with Bennie Maupin’s similarly untethered 1974 wonder The Jewel in The Lotus? You could. But why bother? Magnificent, entirely on its own terms.
This article appears in February 2025.
