Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
“I try to be the same person on stage that I am always. … It’s like why I said I’ve written my name the same way I’ve always had since the sixth grade,” says Isaiah J. Thompson.
(Photo: Evelyn Freja)Pianist Isaiah J. Thompson is on the road, answering a video call from his hotel room in Victoria, a quaint city on Vancouver Island in the western Canadian province of British Columbia. He is there for the TD Victoria International JazzFest, playing later that evening with the New Jazz Underground, a band with his former Juilliard colleagues Sebastian Rios (bass), TJ Reddick (drums) and Noah Halpern (trumpet). But at this moment Thompson is reminiscing about another, rather eventful journey he did while on tour with his own group. “We did Cincinnati at Café Vivace, we did Indianapolis at the Jazz Kitchen, Blue LLama in Ann Arbor. We did Space in Evanston near Chicago, and we did Blues Alley in D.C.,” he recalls.
“Now, between those things,” he continues, “there was incredible rain. We were afraid for some of the flights. What else happened? The power went out at one of the hotels. We had to go [straight] to the sound check, and I’m supposed to run back to another hotel that we were able to get. We got a flat tire — that we had to figure out. And then I think we almost missed something else.” Thompson proclaims, “I believe there’s another force at work that does not want the message of this recording to be getting out — this is spiritual warfare.”
The recording Thompson refers to is his latest album, The Book Of Isaiah: Modern Jazz Ministry (Mack Avenue), a proclamation of his faith in God and the message of the gospel embedded in generations of African Americans who have struggled to find freedom and justice. Thompson has paired these ideals with musical motifs that resonate throughout the album. Of those themes, he states: “They’re talking about what is the African American experience through the lens of faith, but also, just what is faith for anyone?” For Thompson to answer that question, he needed to embark on his own proverbial road trip to Damascus, to be blinded by the light so that he could see.
Isaiah Justin Thompson grew up in West Orange, New Jersey. He’s always included his middle initial in everything he signed, from grade school to the present day. He went to a small Black Baptist church, but unlike many musicians who grew up in the church, Thompson didn’t play there nor was his musicianship developed through gospel music. He instead learned to play jazz in nearby Montclair at Jazz House Kids (run by Melissa Walker and her husband, bassist Christian McBride), and then at New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) Jazz for Teens in Newark. It was in those formative programs that he met and befriended saxophonist Julian Lee, prominently featured on this latest recording. Thompson continued his jazz education at Juilliard, and he has since sojourned down the path to success, being featured in 2022 on NPR’s Jazz Night in America, winning the jazz division in the 2023 American Piano Awards and working with notable artists like McBride, Wynton Marsalis and John Pizzarelli, among others.
But along the way, Thompson developed tendonitis in both arms, for a time rendering him a pianist who was unable to play the piano. “What is a jazz musician without the ability to play?” he asks. “This is something that we’ve seen ... people putting their identity in something that’s not strong enough to uphold them. I believe God kind of intervened in that way, [saying], this is the only way you’re gonna listen.”
Thompson surmised at the time he was putting his faith solely in his own talent, which was why it was taken away from him. He questioned who he really was, what he was truly meant to do. He started by delving into the origins of his name, reading the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament of the Bible. “You see people walking away from the Lord, and the Lord using certain ways to get them back,” he quips. “Now, these weren’t always ways that they liked.” The parallels to his own predicament were too explicit to ignore. Isaiah the prophet himself was initially reluctant to be a servant of God, deeming himself unworthy, but as chronicled in the book, he ultimately was cleansed by God and felt sanctified to do the work he was asked to do.
Isaiah the pianist experienced a similar transformation and commission. “Coming back to the Lord in that way has changed everything for me,” he says. “It changes the way that I play, because I am more interested in getting to the root of what I’m trying to play and trying to accomplish.” His hands have recovered, but they may never fully heal. “I think it’s important that each person has a little kryptonite because I think it humbles them,” he ruminates.
Thompson’s own Book Of Isaiah is a portrayal of his faith through his unique identity as a jazz musician, as opposed to more of a traditional gospel approach. “As someone who has so much respect for people that grew up in [the gospel] tradition and really understand how to play that, I would never put myself in that category,” he professes. Instead, he turned to other models in the jazz idiom, namely Duke Ellington’s music in the form of his three Sacred Concert programs from 1965 to 1973; and Wynton Marsalis, who in 2008 wrote a mass celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Thompson has had the privilege of performing both works. “Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis in particular, they are two people that I found [who] used theological concepts paired with musical and compositional concepts that you could see be repeated in different ways, in a sort of suite format,” he explains.
Thompson cites additional sources of inspiration. “Mary Lou Williams, her creativity to the gospel is unbelievable, just even hearing her ‘Lord’s Prayer’; I would have never thought to do that,” he says. “I think she lets a lot of musicians feel like they’re allowed to experience their individuality through their creativity and an understanding of faith. Charles Mingus, someone that pairs his faith in his activism. … Hearing how he can talk about faith, but he can also talk about protests, and things that are wrong, and seeking justice and denouncing oppression. Also, accepting the folk sounds and sounds of gospel music in his jazz playing I think was also super influential.”
The Book Of Isaiah is energetic, celebratory, sometimes fierce like Thompson’s piece “In The Temple (Spiritual Warfare),” other times introspective and prayerful as in his Ellingtonian soliloquy “A Prayer.” The godly themes often literally have a voice, with lyrics sung brightly and eloquently by Vuyo Sotashe, with Thompsons’ wife, Kaitlin Obien-Thompson, contributing to background vocals on a track. There is also some deep, thunderous chanting à la John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” complemented by Lee’s channeling of some of Coltrane’s own saxophone-specific spiritual language. Bassist Marty Jaffe and drummer Miguel Russell complement Thompson’s pianistic and expressive range, maintaining a hard-swinging fire throughout. Thompson received further musical and spiritual assistance from drummer and percussionist Herlin Riley, who was a big factor in Thompson’s discovery of faith, and pianist Cyrus Chestnut, who produced the album.
Thompson believes a clear message of God’s love and deliverance is ever important in our current times of strife and division. He wrote most of these pieces in 2020 at the apex of the Black Lives Matter movement, which coincided with his exploration of God. “Those things were happening at the same time,” he remembers, “becoming more aware of what was going on in our country and the issues that our country was dealing with, the unveiling of some of the ugly truths that have still been there, but also seeing, coming to an understanding of what faith is doing in my life.”
He wants people to know where he’s coming from, both as an artist and a follower of God. “I try to be the same person on stage that I am always. … It’s like why I said I’ve written my name the same way I’ve always had since the sixth grade.” He elaborates: “And that’s why we can play what I would consider actual jazz, through the lens of faith that doesn’t have to be gospel music. I think the overall message is that your walk will not look the same as someone else’s. This is the way that mine looks; and this is how it looks for right now, but who’s to say whether it’ll look different later? But I do feel that the Lord has called me to use this music to talk about him.”
And Thompson believes music can be a tool for a faith-based deliverance to those who have been shackled by the sins of the world. “If I can help just a few people — jazz musicians and non-jazz musicians — to not put their identity in their playing, then we’re closer to putting our identity in something that could actually change the lives of people, and maybe changing those lives could affect other lives. Then, maybe we’d be making strides in the right direction.”
It’s a direction Thompson has walked toward since his divinely inspired course correction on the road to discovering himself and his purpose in this life. DB
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