Steve Wilson, Enduring Sonance Review

Steve Wilson: Enduring Sonance, Where Lyricism Lives

By Nolan DeBuke

Lyricism is easy to associate with slowness. Give a melody enough space, soften the dynamics, allow notes to linger, and the word seems almost inevitable. Steve Wilson’s Enduring Sonance begins from a broader idea. The songs gathered here have remained with the saxophonist across different periods of his life, but what connects them is not tempo or even style. It is their capacity for lyrical expression.

That distinction is the grounding theme as Wilson and arranger Renee Rosnes shape these melodies. Rosnes, who arranged the entire album, continually puts harmony, counterpoint, groove, instrumental color, and ensemble density into motion. Wilson’s melodies remain emotionally legible inside those environments because his phrasing supplies an engaging continuity. Lyricism becomes a way musicians organize attention, from the melody, and around melody.

Wilson assembled an ensemble capable of making this audible. Rosnes plays piano and Fender Rhodes, Joe Locke vibraphone, Jay Anderson bass, and Kendrick Scott drums, with Kevin Newton adding French horn on “Quiet Girl” and “Francisco.” The instrumentation gives Rosnes several ways to distribute harmonic and melodic information without crowding Wilson’s alto, soprano, or flute. Just as importantly, the rhythm section can create movement without requiring every performance to derive its shape from conventional swing.

Billy Childs’s “Quiet Girl” is a fine example of the ensemble’s connection and focus on the theme. The melody is built from relatively simple material, but voice leading anchors harmonic structures moving in a descending pattern underneath it. Rosnes surrounds the lyrical line with chordal figures that sometimes move with it rhythmically and elsewhere acquire independent motion. The melody therefore does not need to become more elaborate for the arrangement to develop.

The ensemble’s articulation makes phrases especially clear during the head. Unified attacks give the melody a collective identity, while moving inner parts continually change its harmonic surroundings. Dynamics provide another layer of development. What initially sounds like a compact melodic statement begins accumulating weight without sacrificing clarity.

This focus extends into the improvisation. Anderson and Scott build with Rosnes during her piano solo, increasing the energy until Wilson’s soprano entrance continues the trajectory. Locke’s solo subsequently becomes more active over the modern swing feel, his vibraphone lines adding another level of motion as the rhythm section shapes the contour beneath him.

The scale-based motif at the center of the tune remains memorable because it can withstand all of that activity. Its intervals can be repositioned while moving voice leading alters the harmony beneath them. Complexity resides around the melody as much as within it.

“How Long?” shifts the emphasis from arrangement to Wilson’s phrasing. Bill Lee’s composition first establishes its emotional environment through rumbling piano chords, drums, and vibraphone color. Gospel and spiritual-jazz associations emerge before Wilson states the melody, giving his entrance an emotional setting rather than presenting it against a neutral background.

Once Wilson enters, relatively simple melodic material acquires personality through treatment. An ascending scalar idea becomes expressive through a bend, a dynamic swell, and the vocal quality of his articulation. That same vocabulary then shapes a descending figure. Repeated pitches are not simply repeated; differences in attack, weight, and inflection give them character.

Enduring Sonance continues to define its central idea precisely. Written pitches alone do not make Wilson’s playing lyrical. Timing, dynamics, articulation, tone, bends, and the shape of individual intervals determine how those pitches speak.

The ensemble reinforces that approach without merely shadowing him. Anderson’s warm bass provides grounding, while Rosnes’s gospel-colored chords and Scott’s triplet activity maintain the performance’s character. When Wilson moves into improvisation, the modal language expands beyond the initial minor environment into additional colors, increasing harmonic tension while preserving the melodic temperament established at the beginning.

Eventually the ensemble returns to the rubato-like melody. Piano and vibraphone follow related harmonic contours, their voicings rumbling beneath Wilson as cymbals and bass move with them. The harmonic field has become richer, but the melody remains the element through which the performance’s emotional identity is most immediately recognizable.

“The Surest Things Can Change” tests whether that principle depends on spacious pacing. It does not.

Wilson knew Gino Vannelli’s composition from his teenage years, and here the ensemble places it inside an R&B-inflected pocket. Rosnes moves to Fender Rhodes, whose sustained sound changes the harmonic environment immediately. Chords can linger across the groove rather than defining it through sharper acoustic-piano attacks, while Anderson and Scott establish a substantial rhythmic foundation.

Against that stronger grid, Wilson’s soprano remains lyrical. He bends notes, uses glissandos, shapes phrases dynamically, and allows silence to become part of the melodic design. One high note receives an emotional bend and a blues-colored tail; instead of immediately filling the space afterward, Wilson pauses. A laid-back pickup then initiates the next phrase.

That sequence says more about the album’s conception of lyricism than tempo ever could. The groove is firm, but Wilson does not surrender his elasticity to it. He can phrase behind the pocket, stretch an articulation, or leave an opening before the next idea. The ensemble listens to those decisions. Sometimes it fills the resulting space; sometimes it allows the silence to remain.

Lyricism is not a tempo category. It is a way of organizing attention around a melody.

That realization makes Milton Nascimento’s “Francisco” an effective closing statement. The piece was Rosnes’s suggestion for the album, and her arrangement demonstrates how thoroughly orchestration can assume responsibility for formal development while Wilson concentrates on melodic expression.

Piano and vibraphone begin by building harmonic color. Wilson swells into the texture on a sweet lower note before a piano figure establishes the tempo. Newton’s French horn enters in unison and then separates from the line, turning a shared color into counterpoint. That movement from combination to independence becomes characteristic of an arrangement continually changing its internal relationships.

Each passing phrase develops through some combination of harmony, counterpoint, and dynamics. Recurring rhythmic figures at sectional endings provide formal punctuation. Rosnes’s moving piano patterns add another level of activity, while suspended dominant colors and line-cliché movement in the bass keep the harmony in motion.

Wilson does not need to respond by making the melody equally busy. He can continue emphasizing its lyrical character because the ensemble is supplying movement around him.

The distribution of responsibility gives “Francisco” a clear large-scale shape. The performance has an audible beginning, development, climax, and release, yet those stages are not created by melody alone. Instrumental entrances, changes in density, contrapuntal separation, harmonic motion, dynamics, and recurring rhythmic markers tell the listener where the performance is going.

Its spiritual-jazz-like conclusion consequently feels like the destination of a journey the ensemble has been shaping from the opening chords. Across Enduring Sonance, that relationship appears in different forms, allowing orchestration and the ensemble to create the journey.

Rosnes’s arrangements are crucial because they support Wilson’s melodic voice. They redistribute musical responsibility. That freedom allows Wilson to do something deceptively difficult: keep the emotional identity of a melody clear while elements around change.

The songs on Enduring Sonance have lasted for Wilson because they retained meaning across time. The album does not honor that durability by preserving them in their original form. Wilson and Rosnes instead add movement to these melodies, accommodating today’s energy without losing what made them worth remembering. In doing so, they arrive at a useful definition of lyricism: not stillness, not softness, and not necessarily a ballad, but the preservation of expressive melodic identity while the music around it continues to move with the times.