JJJJJEROME ELLIS’s “Vesper Sparrow” is an interwoven tapestry of spiritual jazz, baroque organ music, granular synthesis, subs, trills, plus a spoken word narrative explaining what it’s all about.

The Shelter Press debut from Caribbean-American artist and academic JJJJJerome Ellis examines Black religious musics in elevated, forward style. It’s remarkable – and singular – material, and a rare example of conceptual music that’s full of emotional and physical bangers.

The work of JJJJJerome Ellis lives comfortably in the gaps between silence and possibility.
The Black disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist creates atmospheric soundscapes with saxophone, organ, hammered dulcimer, electronics, and their voice. Improvisation is at the core of their artistry – often chipping away at large slabs of recordings to reveal the piece like a marble sculptor. It’s an expansive and interdisciplinary practice that allows JJJJJerome to adapt to any medium or form, including recorded music, live theatrical and performance art, scoring, spoken word and storytelling, and multimedia/visual works that incorporate sound.

Living as a person who stutters, using their mouth to express themselves proved difficult growing up. The practice of spelling their performance moniker “JJJJJerome” stems from the realization that the word they stutter most frequently is their own name. Despite a brief placement in speech therapy as a child – Everything clicked when they picked up the saxophone in seventh grade. “I still stutter on the saxophone, but it’s different.” As an artist, their creative ethos now revolves around the exploration of stuttering through music, expounding upon the ability of each to shape time. Theyhonor the stutter through art.

Forthcoming sophomore record Vesper Sparrow (Shelter Press) is born out of the connection to Black religious tradition and inheritance. It is a continuation of the artist’s ongoing study of the intersections between music and sound, stuttering, and Blackness, through the lens of time. The album is comprised of two complete thoughts, and hinges on a recorded stutter. JJJJJerome splits the four-part composition “Evensong” by fading out the stutter in part two, and sandwiches tracks three and four (“Vesper Sparrow” and “Black-Throated Sparrow”) in-between. “The stutter becomes a structuring moment,” they explain, regarding the opportunity to fill the time opened up.

Suspension, then, becomes integral to JJJJJerome’s musical language. Both stuttering and granular synthesis can suspend moments in time, and “invite multiple ways of inhabiting, traversing, and connecting with others in those moments.” The artist also pulls in elements of pop production – electronic textures and distortions inspired in part by indie-rock; and spoken word, sampling, and audio manipulation drawn from Caribbean and Black American musics.

JJJJJEROME ELLIS’s “Vesper Sparrow” (SP165) is available on limited bottle green LP, regular black LP and CD at Shelter Press.