Out February 7, 2025, Griot Songs marks the return of the Omar Thomas Large Ensemble after more than a decade, featuring soloists Jason Palmer, Mark Zaleski, Alex Brown, Mark Cocheo and others

 

“Griot Songs firmly plants Omar Thomas in the pantheon of distinguished and exceptional writers. He blurs the lines stylistically in the best of ways with a texturally compelling 'heart and soul' sonic story all his own.”

– Grammy-winning drummer/composer Terri Lyne Carrington

 

“Omar Thomas… proves himself a modern-day griot - summoning influences, traditions, and narratives from both past and present, framing them in a manner that is at varying times tender, dramatic, mystical, and joyful - but always absolutely captivating!” – Grammy-nominated composer/bandleader Chuck Owen

 

In West African tradition, the griot is a storyteller, poet and musician whose songs become a repository for a community’s traditions and history. Sixteen years in the making, Griot Songs – the breathtaking third release by the Omar Thomas Large Ensemble – is a distinctly personal and emotionally vibrant take on the role of the modern griot. Through his visionary compositions and arrangements, Omar Thomas spins captivating narratives from his own experiences, inspirations and heritage.

 

It’s been over a decade since the release of the Omar Thomas Large Ensemble’s last album, We Will Know: An LGBT Civil Rights Piece in Four Movements, which Grammy Award-winning drummer and composer Terri Lyne Carrington hailed as a “thought provoking, multi-layered masterpiece.” The big band made its auspicious debut in 2013 with I Am, which entered the iTunes Jazz Charts at #1. But Griot Songs, out February 7, 2025, is the project that Thomas has envisioned since initially forming the ensemble for his graduate composition recital at New England Conservatory in 2008. The earliest versions of three of the pieces on the album date back to that time, with the remainder spanning several years of composing, revising and dreaming.

 

In the meantime, Thomas established himself an acclaimed and in-demand composer for wind ensemble. In 2019, he was awarded the National Bandmasters Association / Revelli Award for his wind composition “Come Sunday,” becoming the first Black composer awarded the honor in the contest’s 42-year history. In addition, he’s a respected educator currently serving as Associate Professor of Composition and Jazz Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Griot Songs marks Thomas’ impassioned return to his roots. “I was ready to reintroduce myself as a big band composer,” he declares.

 

If Griot Songs marks a coming out, it’s a strikingly confident and vital one, with Thomas staking his claim as a singular voice on the modern big band landscape. Trumpeter Sean Jones praises his “Deep sophistication, imagination, soulful inflection and drive… The ability to encapsulate the sounds of America seamlessly is the blessing that is Omar Thomas.” Each of the pieces on the album – five original compositions and a pair of inspired arrangements – traverses a wide swath of emotional terrain. The often epic lengths allow the music to breathe and evolve through Thomas’ intricate architecture and the fervent soloing of his stellar ensemble.

 

The earliest piece on the album, opener “The Sun in September” draws inspiration from a sadly missed opportunity. Written in 2008 as Thomas was embarking on his first faculty position at Berklee College of Music, it reflects on his tenure at NEC, where he’d just earned his master’s degree. He’d enrolled at the conservatory with the intention of studying with Bob Brookmeyer, but the legendary composer/arranger’s health issues (he passed away in 2011) prevented those lessons from ever taking place.

 

“The Sun in September” is Thomas’ imagining of the composition he would have brought to his sessions with Brookmeyer, highlighted by Lihi Haruvi’s tender soprano intro and a soaring Jason Palmer solo. “I'm using Bob Brookmeyer’s ‘isms’ as I interpret them, not having studied with him but having studied him,” Thomas explains.

 

Brookmeyer was one of the composers and arrangers who originally drew Thomas to the large ensemble realm. Playing in middle and high school jazz ensembles as a trombonist he’d navigated standard big band charts, but his college band director introduced him to more wide-ranging possibilities. “During my first semester I went from playing Mark Taylor and Stan Kenton charts to Bob Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely, Maria Schneider and John Hollenbeck, and it literally broke my world open. I didn't know that big bands could do that or were allowed to do that. It was like a two-dimensional being seeing the third dimension for the first time.”

 

Thomas went on to study with Schneider, Ken Schaphorst and Frank Carlberg, and has obviously taken those impressions to heart. His arrangement of Radiohead’s “Sail to the Moon” (from 2003’s Hail to the Thief) is a bold expansion of the original, more than tripling its length while retaining its singularly cosmic atmosphere. “Rather than just doing a flyover of this planet,” Thomas says of the song, “I really wanted to land on its surface and explore it.”

 

Thomas’ other adaptation for Griot Songs is Lyle Mays’ “Episode d’Azur,” originally recorded on the Pat Metheny Group’s 1996 album We Live Here. Thomas’ propulsive arrangement pays homage to that influential band, which made a profound impact on him in his teen years, and to the keyboardist/composer who tragically died in 2020 at just 66 years of age.

 

The ardent grooves and fervid spirit of “Obeah Woman” stem from the spiritual practices of Thomas’ Caribbean roots; he was born in Brooklyn to Guyanese parents. The tempestuous beauty of “Nothing There” had a more immediate and universal inspiration – it is, quite simply, a break-up song, albeit a particularly sophisticated one. “The Path” parallels literal and metaphorical journeys in tribute to Thomas’ friend Becca Roach, whose own path has led her to provide medical care at orphanages in remote areas of China, Guatemala and Zimbabwe among other life-saving work, and who is a hiking companion for the composer along pathways like Colorado’s Garden of the Gods.

 

The album’s final track, “A Touch of Obsidian, A Flash of Scarlet,” was initiated by the least likely of sparks – the 2008 season finale of Project Runway. Thomas was so struck by the colors and sensuality of winner Christian Siriano’s conquistador-inspired line that nearly all of the material for this entrancing piece spilled out as soon as the episode’s credits rolled.

 

“All of these pieces are personal to me for very different reasons,” Thomas explains. “But they also work together as a cohesive story that I'm telling to the listener. I didn’t write or conceive of these pieces for an album, but as I continued to work on them over the years I began to discover a very clear shape to the story, so much so that I can’t conceive of the tracks existing in any other order because they wouldn't make emotional sense.”