December 10, 2025
On January 30, vibraphonist Joel Ross will release his 5th Blue Note album Gospel Music, a sonic interpretation of the biblical story and an exploration of his faith that delivers a message of hope and love. The album is introduced today with the lead track “Wisdom Is Eternal (For Barry Harris)” and features an expanded sextet line-up of Ross’ band Good Vibes with Josh Johnson on alto saxophone, Maria Grand on tenor saxophone, Jeremy Corren on piano, Kanoa Mendenhall on bass, and Jeremy Dutton on drums.
An homage to an array of influences, Gospel Music follows the arc of the grand biblical story. Each composition carries the emotional weight of the story of creation, the fall, and salvation, corresponding to biblical texts that Ross includes in the liner notes. At the center of it is the desire that we meditate on the meaning of the ultimate sacrifice that defines a faith in Christ that calls on its practitioners to love God and others. Playing in this band mirrors that very attitude.
Ross wants us to listen for the ways that the band practices what some of our best minds have preached. He wants us to achieve the kind of clarity he has achieved in his sound, where the music remains “technically difficult.” But with the lessons of The Parable of the Poet and nublues in tow, Good Vibes has moved into a place where the complex can be offered more clearly. The complex can offer sound as meditative space for us to reconsider ourselves as we relate to others. Ross’ message is reflected in the way he leads a band and creates space for them sonically. “If there’s anything I do talk to the band about, it’s about that, making sure we’re making space for everyone and supporting everyone. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do.”
Gospel Music revisits the intricacy of the vibraphonist’s earlier records and the directness and accessibility of the later, producing a sound that is unmistakably Joel Ross while reintroducing himself and the good news simultaneously. It is released in a moment where he has been deepening his study and exploration into the theological and historical depths of his faith over the last several years. Returning to some of his older unreleased compositions and seeing them in light of new experiences, he has created an album which reveals more of his person. “This is probably the boldest example of trying to share what I believe is the good news as well as in homage to where I’m coming from,” he explains.
This identity is equally grounded in the world of jazz pedagogy as it is in the sounds of the Black church in Chicago. While he gravitated toward the former, Chicago gospel was an inescapable element of the sonic community that shaped him. “I’m coming from the Black church in Chicago, playing gospel music,” Ross reminds us.
