For Such A Time AS THis

For more than three decades, Eric Reed has been one of the most influential and beloved jazz musicians. He’s recorded close to 30 accomplished leader albums showcasing his virtuosic chops, intellectual clarity and unwavering will to swing. Most remarkable is his ability to refract and coalesce a wide range of musical, spiritual, and personal influences into a single stream of consciousness. This is perhaps the most personal of them all.

For Such a Time as This is a powerful and uplifting program framed by the realities of global pandemic anxiety, persistent racism and racial injustice, and an acrimonious, fraught Presidential election season. It was in Los Angeles in early 2020, when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a city-wide shutdown, that Reed made the decision to record the album with local L.A. musicians. By the end of June, he was ready and had assembled a gifted, young quartet to record a set of recently penned originals, carefully chosen standard old chestnuts, and - as he has done regularly over the past 15 years - some restorative Gospel selections.

The group (drum virtuoso Kevin Kanner, Australia-born bassist Alex Boneham, tenor and soprano saxophonist Chris Lewis) nonetheless displays the chemistry of a long-established band. Reed’s original composition Make Me Better is sung by the soulful Henry Jackson, who “puts a fine point on everything I’m hoping and wishing for – that I will be made better by this experience, and that I will encourage other people to be better as well.”