Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Gregg August is a New York-based bassist, composer, and arranger, active in modern and Latin jazz scenes, classical, and avant-garde circles. He is a longstanding member of the J.D. Allen Trio. In 2009, after Barack Obama took office, and white media hyped the U.S. as a "post-racial society," August penned Dialogues on Race with hope and healthy skepticism. Employing the works of poets, he examined race relations and meditated in particular on the short life and horrific murder of Emmett Till in 1955 which ignited the Civil Rights movement. When he'd finished it, August shelved the work until history intervened. In the 2000s and 2010s, Birtherism, the rise of white supremacy, and the birth of Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of murders of unarmed minorities by police, brought calls to release it. August, a white musician, was initially reluctant and consulted with black friends and musicians. Encouraged, he refined the suite's dozen pieces for recording, assembled singers, narrator Wayne Smith, strings, and an 11-piece big band that included saxophonists Allen and John Ellis, bass clarinetist Ken Thomson, tuba player Marcus Rojas, and pianist Luis Perdomo. Dialogues on Race is an awe-inspiring, big-band jazz meditation that simultaneously intersects the large group traditions of Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Carla Bley, and John Carter. Its compositions offer deftly scripted counterpoint, canny interplay, sprawling harmonic inquiries, nuanced textural expressions, and killer solos all befitting and underscoring the narrative subject's poignancy. The work's inspiration is Marilyn Nelson's poem Your Only Child in which she compares the suffering of Mamie Till to Mary, the mother of Jesus. It appears three times here, first sung by Frank Lacy, second as an arco bass solo, and finally by Shelley Washington. Before and between are glorious tunes including set-opener "Sherbet," based on a poem by Cornelius Eady. Its moaning tenor and arco bass trills introduce a complex exercise in hard-swinging post-bop. Activist and Vietnam vet Wayne Smith narrates Francisco X. Alarcon's Letter to America. The music bridges the author's moral conviction with Mingus' deep blue harmonies and Ellington's chromaticism. Carolyn Kizer's poem I Sang in the Sun is offered by Forest Van Dyke. The elegant chart teases subtle dissonances from the harmony while engaging space as an additional narrative device. "Mother Mamie's Reflections" uses a recording of Mamie Till's voice -- above crackling improv by Rojas, August, and Thomson -- discussing Emmett, his violent death, and her insistence that his casket remain open so all could see what racist cruelty begets. "Sweet Words on Race," based on a poem by Langston Hughes, offers intense interplay between conguero Mauricio Herrera and the horns, bridged by tight, boppish montunos from Perdomo. Set-closer "Blues Finale" offers dissonant Monk-ish cadences, Mingus' grooving blue orchestrations, and smoking scat vocals from Lacy. Dialogues on Race, Vol. 1 is a major piece of music from a conscientious, gifted composer. Attractive in creative musicality and unflinching in honesty, August offers the jazz world a masterwork in contemporary art that demands discussion, evaluation, and dissemination. ~ Thom Jurek