Joshua Redman, Words Fall Short Review

Joshua Redman’s Words Fall Short: How Music Speaks

By Ferell Aubre

Joshua Redman’s Words Fall Short (Blue Note, June 20, 2025) is the first release since his vocal-leaning release where are we. The music for both albums were conceived during the pandemic’s reflective hush. The eight originals on Words Fall Short coalesce through an organic spark of soundcheck improvisations that matured into fully realized tracks during the quartet’s 2024 touring circuit.

The album’s title, drawn from Yiyun Li’s Where Reasons End, addresses human imperfection: “Words fall short, yes, but sometimes their shadows can reach the unspeakable.” That philosophy underpins the record’s harmonic and emotional hues of melody, as Redman explores this harmonic/melodic narrative with his quartet, an alluring glow of today’s jazz is created.

Redman’s recalibrated quartet features Paul Cornish (piano), Philip Norris (double bass), and Nazir Ebo (drums), forming a cohesive ecosystem within the compositional space and the architectural dance of spontaneity. Norris’ playing is elegantly in line with Redman’s vernacular  with Cornish’s expressive presence adding context of colors to Ebo’s groove that is delightfully flexible and structurally sound. Cornish provides a harmonic anchor formed in the same fires as Redman’s earlier quartets. His approach gives each tune a flexible chamber-jazz fluidity.

Across the album, the various ensembles form an interplay that remains lucid: torching melodic sparks without obscuring the flame of each performance. Whether sculpting hymnlike passages or buoyant swing, the group’s is impressively poised to reveal musical stories.

Words Fall Short opens and closes like a mirrored meditation, with “A Message to Unsend” and “Era’s End” forming a lyrical palindrome that bookmarks the album’s arc. These two tracks are thematic anchors of the melding of styles and emotions as they are reflections of intention and closure. “A Message to Unsend” emerges with arpeggiated clarity, a kind of hesitant honesty that speaks through the ensemble’s voicings in soliloquy. It’s a statement without flourish, pure in its motive, setting a tone of introspective to express the vulnerability of the soul. The final track, “Era’s End,” features Gabrielle Cavassa’s voice singing the melody with a tone that distills the ache of unsaid things. Her phrasing transforms the album’s sparseness into sung words of expression, making words and song indistinguishable. These moments punctuate the record with a kind of human truth that transcends compositional design.

“So It Goes,” arriving early in the sequence, provides the musical dialogue of Redman’s tenor saxophone conversing with the rhythm section and Melissa Aldana’s tenor in a lyrical exchanges. The improvisational expressions braid lines, each voice aware of the other’s weight and silence, creating a dialog that breathes a musical language. One might consider the influence of classical and popular music to shape it’s chamber jazz spirit of intimate textures to, scaled and emotionally unadorned peaks of musical energy.

Track five, “Icarus,” shifts the album’s center of gravity. Introduced through irregular meter and funk-tinted textures, it brims with motion. But it’s Skylar Tang’s trumpet performance that crystallizes the track’s identity. Her entrance is precise and fluid, gliding atop the rhythmic scaffolding with melodic assurance. That she learned the arrangement overnight only magnifies the naturalness of her delivery. The presence of another voice adds variety to the flow of the composition and album. Tang’s trumpet complements Redman with the supportive rhythm section completing the song’s architecture.

“Borrowed Eyes” and the album’s title piece lean into a kind of classical balladry, the ensemble building phrases and harmonic beds.  Cornish’s piano cleverness is buoyed by Norris’s attentive bass work, and grounded by Ebo’s sensitive drumming. Norris’ bass solo on “Borrowed Eyes” is very lyrical. This tracks shimmer instead of boiling, with a sense of breath that allows melodies to lift and settle naturally. In these moments, Redman draws on jazz and other dialects ranging from classical to soul.

What defines Words Fall Short is its harmonic exploration. Redman’s writing, especially in pieces like “Over the Jelly-Green Sky,” evokes the choral colors of jazz, but with harmonic motion that gestures toward the expansive, modal richness of 1970s pop and rock, particularly the progressions and lush voicings pioneered by The Beatles. The free-flowing interaction of “She Knows” showcases an ensemble that utilizes the sonic space to deliberately sculpt patterns, not to impress, but to convey abstract emotional clarity.

Words Fall Short is simultaneously reflective and forward-facing. It reminds us that jazz’s true power is found in collective breath—when leader and accompanists mind each other’s pauses, inflections, and mutual textures. Under Redman’s direction, Cornish, Norris, and Ebo comprise a listening chamber that marries elegance with kinetic energy. Meanwhile, the guest spots are not mere adornments; they integrate seamlessly into Redman’s harmonic world.

Words Fall Short marks a return to instrumental primacy (while honoring the beauty of vocal collaboration), and in doing so, stabilizes Redman’s place as a composer-performer who isn’t content to merely rest on laurels, but instead seeks out fresh quartet voices and harmonic dialogues. It is thus, arguably, his finest effort of 2025, an album of subtle power, emotional clarity, and harmonic warmth, brimming with the human fragility that language can never fully capture.