Vintage Jazz Quartet - Four By Four: An Homage to the MJQ (2025) [DSD64]

What makes this project especially poignant is the thread connecting past to present: composer David Chesky, who contributes two original works to this album, was himself a student of John Lewis. As a young pianist, Chesky was deeply shaped by Lewis’s quiet rigor, musical philosophy, and belief that jazz deserved a place alongside the world’s great concert music. This recording is, in many ways, a tribute from a grateful student to a wise teacher.

In the same spirit of musical brotherhood that defined the MJQ, Vintage offers a recording that celebrates history while moving it forward. Their playing is crisp yet heartfelt, elegant yet exploratory. They remind us that jazz, like all great art, thrives in the tension between inheritance and invention.

This is not just a tribute album. It is a conversation across generations, a nod to the masters, and a bold step by four musicians writing their own chapter in the story of jazz.