The Jazzman Cometh: Isaiah J. Thompson Finds His Inner Soul

Isaiah J. Thompson is here. With the release of his beatific new album, The Book of Isaiah: Modern Jazz Ministry (Mack Avenue, 2025), the pianist/composer has not only made a significant contribution to the spiritual jazz canon but proven himself as one of the finest jazzmen in the city (and country).

A New Jersey native and current Harlemite, the 28-year-old musician (and Juilliard professor) started playing the piano as a teenager and held a particular reverence for jazz.

“I think the music teaches us how to be with one another,” he says. “It’s a music where you can come as yourself, but you also are held accountable. I think that’s what’s super special about it: learning how to be who you are, you and your personality being wanted because we need personalities, but also being able to balance your full force while being able to communicate with somebody else and accept their ideas.”

Thompson’s intuition, and finesse on the keys, soon caught the ear of Wynton Marsalis, with whom he began performing and who enlisted him to play on his record Handful of Keys (Blue Engine Records, 2017).

Becoming a key member of the New York City jazz scene, Thompson went on to study at Juilliard and has released several albums as a leader, including the celebrated The Power of the Spirit (Blue Engine, 2023). The Book of Isaiah, however, with its deeply personal origins, is his most compelling record yet.

After developing tendinitis from extensive playing, the musician found one day that he couldn’t do so anymore. “A lot of the music that I recorded on this record I had composed a long time ago, and I had been working on for a long time, for a number of years. And I grew up in a church, but I wasn’t really walking with God,” he says. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. That just wasn’t my experience.”

Thompson continues, “I made the music an idol of sorts, where it was all I thought about and wanted to do, not realizing that that’s not something that could sustain me, really. With this music, in particular, it got to a point where I ended up injuring myself, and so if you’re a musician who can’t play, what are you then?

“If your entire identity is in the playing, and you cannot play, who are you? I realized that my identity had to be something much more powerful than myself and the music, and that’s when I shifted my identity to God.”

The Book of Isaiah, consequently, has a spiritual quality, seeing Thompson play with renewed resolve, questing after a higher being and plonking out the woes of the world. Still, with its warmth and straight-ahead style, the album is accessible even to secular listeners.

Opening track, “The Cakewalk Dilemma,” for instance, with its sunny saxophone and zippy bass, sounds like traditional bebop and begins the record on a welcoming note. The following song, “The Highest Calling (Asé, Yahweh),” is similarly lively, yet sees Thompson digging deeper into his relationship with God. “I want to be, / What I want to be, / And I want to be free to believe,” featured vocalist and Thompson stand-in Vuyo Sotashe sings, as though looking to the heavens.

The Book of Isaiah is undoubtedly a reflective, searching album. Like Kamasi Washington’s Heaven and Earth (2018) and indeed John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1965), the record is a call to God. It’s Thompson addressing an almighty figure. On standout tracks, “Spring Flower, Sprung Flower” and “In the Temple (Spiritual Warfare),” the pianist plays gently on the keys, whispering to this figure and seeking its restorative wisdom.

As the record continues, Thompson progresses along his spiritual journey as, on the middle track, “The Feeling of Freedom,” Sotashe sings, “Oh, Lord, / Blessed be that your wisdom rain on me,” and Thompson presses on the keys with revelry. Like Mingus on “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” from Blues & Roots (1960) or Alice Coltrane throughout Journey in Satchidananda (1971), Thompson plays with some downhome jubilee here. His continual questing, however, is all for the broader purpose of connecting with listeners.

“Coming back to this, kind of using all of those small influences I had as a child, coming back to it later, all of that kind of culminated through the process of healing,” Thompson says. Discussing his goals for the album, he says that he hopes listeners “mainly get some insight into what my relationship with God was and maybe challenge them to think about what that could mean for them.”

Wanting “to show people that there’s room” for them to explore their own beliefs and meaningfully relate to one another, Thompson has made an uplifting and joyous album. “I think everybody is used in a certain way,” he says. “Everyone has inherent value.”

Isaiah J. Thompson performed as a member of the John Pizzarelli Trio at Birdland through Aug. 2. He’ll resume touring in 2026 but advises to please visit his website for possible earlier dates.