Photo: Rob Miller

Trumpeter and cornet player Stephen Haynes will release his new album Pomegranate next month, on New Atlantis. (Pre-order it from the label physically or on Bandcamp.) The album features tuba player Ben Stapp, guitarist Joe Morris, bassist William Parker, and drummer Warren Smith. Pomegranate was conceived as a posthumous dedication to Bill Dixon, with whom Haynes studied and worked for 40 years. (The two men can be heard together on the two volumes of Dixon’s In Italy, from 1980, 2008’s 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur, and 2009’s Tapestries for Small Orchestra.) Parker and Smith also played with Dixon on several occasions, Parker on 1985’s Thoughts and 1993’s two-volume Vade Mecum, Smith on 17 Musicians and Tapestries.

Bill Dixon left specific instructions with regards to tributes… “If you want to pay tribute to me, you should (be) do(ing) your own work. If you have really paid attention to me, then you will understand that.” Thus, Pomegranate, which does not sound like a Bill Dixon album, but rather like an album that has taken some of Dixon’s ideas about orchestration, compositional technique, and collective interaction to heart and employed them in the creation of music that’s not only new—as in, you’ve never heard anything quite like this—but constantly shifting.

Burning Ambulance is exclusively premiering the title track; check it out below.

—Phil Freeman