For those unaware, BloodLines (due out July 23rd, 2025 via Giant Step Arts) is more than a debut; it is a statement of purpose, a spiritual declaration, and a generational bridge.

Recorded live during the day at Ornithology in Brooklyn on June 1–2, 2024, this collection of original music introduces tenor saxophonist and composer Rico Jones as one of the most emotionally articulate and thematically intentional young voices in jazz today.

Backed by a formidable trio—guitarist Max Light, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Nasheet Waits—Jones offers a body of work that honors lineage while searching for transcendence in the present moment.

At the core of the album lies BloodLines: Suite of the Omnipotent and Eternal Spirit, a five-part opening suite that lays bare Jones’s worldview: that sound is a conduit for prayer, ancestry, and vision.

These pieces are not dedicated to the divine, but written of the divine—an important distinction, as Jones considers each movement a living fragment of a larger, omnipresent whole.

1. I. Invocation: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit
2. II. Lone Wolf: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit
3. III. BloodLines: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit
4. IV. Queen Isabelle: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit
5. V. DwennimmeN: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit
6. Judgement and Absolution
7. Across Time
8. The Moment
9. The Voice of God Shines Brightly on My Heart

Drawing from his Indigenous and Latino heritage, and with Jones viewing music as a form of cultural memory and sacred storytelling, this expertly crafted body of work opens on the mystically compositional Invocation: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit and a most dutifully sculpted celestial landscape that becomes Lone Wolf: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit, and then we get the funkily grooved BloodLines: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit and the tenderly melodious Queen Isabelle: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit.

Along next is the emotionally cultured DwennimmeN: Suite of the Eternal and Omnipresent Spirit which itself is backed by a rather stately resonance that resides within Judgement and Absolution, a fluctuating permanence that drives Across Time, the set rounding out on the ubiety of The Moment, coming to an all too soon close on the enriched melodies and rhythms that come together to form The Voice of God Shines Brightly on My Heart.

Musicians:
Rico Jones – Tenor Saxophone
Max Light – Guitar
Joe Martin – Bass
Nasheet Waits – Drums

Official Purchase Link

www.ricojonesmusician.com