" data-original-title="" title="">Isaiah J. Thompson has established a particularly convincing profile as one of New York's most promising keyboard artists, while his recordings have been at home on Jazz at Lincoln Center's label ever since his 2017 debut, Handful Of Keys. The Power Of The Spirit can be considered the pianist's most original statement to date, as he explores nine original compositions with a powerful cast of New York's new generation, captured live over two dates at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club.

The album is filled to the brim with swinging soul and gospel jazz, presented in an acoustic guise much in line with the gospel jazz spirit that emerged more frequently in the late '60s. There are big melodies, carried by wholesome cadences as on "The IT Department," extensive modal explorations with passionately shrieking saxophone cries as on "The Soul Messenger" and up-tempo post-bop as navigated on "For Phineas," with each musician—tenor Julian Lee, bassist Philip Norris and Dome Branch on drums—fighting to reach a new high after every measure. Branch drums on four of the nine cuts, TJ Reddick controls the sticks on the rest. Thompson's language is drenched in the harmonic vocabulary of the Tin Pan Alley tradition and the soloist idioms of