By Michael J. West | Published April 2025
If the words “silt” or “remembrance” ring a bell in a jazz context, you might have already figured out that Silt Remembrance Ensemble is the latest project of bassist, poet and conceptualist Luke Stewart. It brings together his Silt Trio (with tenor saxophonist Brian Settles, drummer Chad Taylor) and members of his Remembrance Quintet (saxophonists Daniel Carter, who also plays trumpet, and Jamal Moore, who also plays percussion). The result, The Order, doesn’t sound quite like either group — although it does sound indefatigably like Stewart.
In fact, it might be said to encapsulate everything Stewart does best. The tunes tend toward the kind of infectious, organic grooves that shape the Silt Trio’s two albums, as on the bass-driven “River Road” and “Commandments” or the drum-circle-with-saxes “Lion’s Den.” Yet it has the wider textural palette, busier interaction and poetic augmentations of the Remembrance Quintet; the evocative literary and spoken voices of No Land (“Memory”) and Janice Lowe (“The Order”) distinguish themselves, as does Stewart’s on “Repeat.”
Even mash-up ensembles like this one are more than the sum of their parts, though. Silt Remembrance’s own identity presents itself most robustly on the eponymous “Silt Remembrance.” Beginning with Carter’s bleating alto dancing over an African-inspired rhythm, it soon features all three saxophonists furiously engaging with each other, with counterpoint giving way to cooperative development and back again. As they gradually cohere, bass and drums increasingly diverge, creating a looser framework that never quite gets all the way to free before reuniting in another determined groove.
Much is happening here, all of it captivating. DB
