By Gary Fukushima | Published January 2026
Hikmah is the Arabic word for “wisdom.” At age 65, this Oxford-born pianist would have the necessary years of life and study to stake a claim on that word in any tongue. But Pat Thomas’ chosen language here is jazz, in the dialect of Cecil Taylor, Matthew Shipp or Paul Bley, but especially Sun Ra. In these eight improvised vignettes, Thomas unpremeditatedly cenotaphs Ra’s fearless explorations with a glint of the celestial keyboardist’s tongue-in-cheek humor.
For instance, on “For Joe Gallivan,” after an introductory series of clusters that move from tentative and spacious to frenetically dense, Thomas settles into an almost-tonal Afro-Cuban-like merengue, like wicked ghouls dancing the salsa. “The Shehu” lopes along in a half-time feel, Thomas’ left hand holding steady like Gulliver while his right pulls mightily against it with the strength of a thousand Lilliputians. “For Toumani Diabaté” begins as a pensive chorale with deliciously threaded textures into near-familiar chordal structures, eventually deconstructing into a panoply of light flurries, concluding with some hypnotic, zither-like strumming.
“Luqman The Wise” features the barely audible sound of Thomas caressing his hands and fingers over the frame and strings of the piano, with the occasional thump and pluck. “For Caroline L. Karcher” is a study in two-handed counterpoint, where Thomas manages to maintain the spontaneous themes in each hand throughout. But the perpetuation and burgeoning of motivic constructs undergird all of these pieces, evidencing Thomas’ unalloyed wisdom to organize sound and texture in a myriad of innovative and surprising ways.
