Due out October 10, 2025,
Reflections on: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a powerful commentary from one of the most important voices in modern jazz.
“A cult hero and musician’s musician in jazz circles, a tenor player with a sound and language of his own, at once postmodernist and attuned to the lessons of pan-historical jazz lore.” – Josef Woodard, DownBeat
Musicians make albums every day. But statements come along far less often. With his latest release, Reflections on: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner has crafted a magnum opus both deeply personal and macrocosmic in its exploration of social issues.
Turner is widely heralded as one of the most important musician of modern jazz, with The New York Times calling him “possibly jazz’s premier player” and instrumental peers lavishing him with praise, such as Ravi Coltrane (“I think Mark Turner is one of the most important players that has come along in the last 20 years, easily the most influential.”) and Miguel Zenón (“One of the things that jumps out is just his range, the way he plays the altissimo. Even when I heard him the first time, that jumped out, because it’s not usual—maybe now it is, but then it wasn’t.”)
The seeds of this project go back two decades to when Turner undertook an autodidactic review of African-American history. Visiting the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, he came across a rack of essential history books. Among them was The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, the seminal Civil Rights activist, diplomat and professor who, among his many accomplishments, is known for writing—in collaboration with his composer brother J. Rosamond Johnson—”Lift Every Voice and Sing,” considered to be the Black National Anthem.
The book is a semi-fictional account, set in post-Reconstruction America, of a biracial man able to “pass” as white during a fraught period in the country’s history. For Turner, it was not an abstraction: “I hadn’t ever read a book that talked about passing before. At least I hadn’t read one that talked about passing that was written that early on. In my family, we talked about that all the time because my mother can pass. Also my great aunts did exactly what the protagonist does in the book.” Turner was struck by how Johnson, in a book under 250 pages, could “cover a lot of the issues in quite a nuanced way. I think more nuanced than I think the issue of—I hate to use the word race because I don’t actually believe in it, maybe phenotype is a good word—affects people’s lives in the Americas and actually most other parts of the planet.”
This is not the first time that Turner has used literature as inspiration but is his first foray into creating a coherent album entirely channeling a book while avoiding creating programmatic music: He recites passages during the album, powerful lines like “Sometimes it seems to me that I have never really been a Negro, that I have been only a privileged spectator of their inner life; at other times I feel that I have been a coward, a deserter, and I am possessed by a strange longing for my mother’s people“; titles his compositions with allusions to the book’s chronology; and, in the most direct nod to the author, has pianist David Virelles quote “Lift Every Voice and Sing” towards the conclusion. Virelles is part of the band that premiered the work during a weeklong residency in 2018 at the Village Vanguard. Completing the group are three others with whom Turner has long relationships: trumpeter Jason Palmer, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Nasheet Waits.
The resulting suite is compelling and multi-faceted, traversing moods, deftly balancing the cerebral with the intuitive, standing alone as a stunning compositional achievement made all the more riveting for its prismatic connection to the source material. Nowhere is this more gripping than during two central sections, “New York” and “Europe”, when Virelles is heard on synthesizers, a choice Turner made to fête the work of another famed African-American figure, bandleader Sun Ra. The former is gritty and propulsive, the latter probing and insistent and includes the ruminative text “You will come to see that evil is a force, and, like the physical and chemical forces, we cannot annihilate it…to attempt to right the wrongs and ease the sufferings of the world in general is a waste of effort. You had just as well try to bail the Atlantic by pouring the water into the Pacific.”
Asked how he went through the process of selecting the texts, Turner said, “I wanted to have music that was enhanced with words, not words that were enhanced by music. I had to try to find passages that were strong, provocative, something that if they’re short could make the listener think.”
As to using Weldon’s words for inspiration, he observed, “I did want it to be more cohesive. That’s why all the songs are musically connected in some way, with harmony themes, forms, voice leading, even the keys are all worked out… Musicians write music that obviously comes from psycho-spiritual emotional sources and we use the craft of music to express those things but I think when we create parameters, it just helps us to compose. What’s nice about the book is it sets certain moods or emotional feelings or at least gave me something to think, feel about, in order to write music.”
Reflections on: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is the latest entry in Giant Step’s new series Modern Masters and New Horizons. Specially curated by trumpeter Jason Palmer and drummer Nasheet Waits, the series features artists who have helped shape the modern jazz landscape along with rising voices doing the same for the next generation. Artists currently slated to contribute include saxophonists Neta Raanan, drummer Eric McPherson and the Edward Pérez/Michael Thomas Band.
COPYRIGHT JIMMY KATZ
Giant Step Arts
Founded by Jimmy and Dena Katz in January 2018, Giant Step Arts is an innovative, artist-focused non-profit organization dedicated to commissioning and showcasing the work of some of modern jazz’s most innovative artists. In an era where it is increasingly difficult for musicians to earn a living, Giant Step Arts offers artists the creative and financial resources to create bold music free of commercial pressure and with total control of their artistic projects.
For the musicians it chooses to work with, by invitation only, Giant Step Arts:
• presents premiere performances
• records these performances for independent release
• provides the artists with digital downloads and CDs to sell; artists retain complete ownership of their masters
• provides the artists with photos for promotional use
• provides PR support for the recordings
Katz says: “Giant Step Arts exists to aid musicians in realizing their artistic dreams. It does not sell music and artists retain full rights to their music. We work tirelessly to raise funds with the goal of helping more musicians.”
Jimmy Katz
Through his award-winning photography with wife Dena Katz and his esteemed work as a recording engineer, Katz has spent nearly 30 years helping to shape the way audiences see and hear jazz musicians. Katz has been part of more than 600 recording projects—many historic—and has photographed more than 200 magazine covers. Whether taken in the studio, in the clubs, on the streets or in the musicians’ homes, his photographs offer intimate portraits of the artists at work and in repose and capture the collaborative and improvisatory process of jazz itself. Recipient of the Jazz Journalists Association award for jazz photography in both 2006 and 2011, Katz’s work has been exhibited in Germany, Italy and Japan. Among the world-renowned artists he has photographed are Sonny Rollins, Keith Jarrett, Ornette Coleman, Freddie Hubbard, Roy Haynes, Cassandra Wilson, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, John Zorn, Pat Metheny, and Dizzy Gillespie. His recording credits include such artists as David S. Ware, Joe Lovano, Harold Mabern, William Parker, Benny Golson, Chris Potter, Mark Turner, George Coleman and Jason Palmer, among others.
Giant Step Arts – GSA 17
Release date: October 10, 2025