William Hooker is an architect of sound, a cartographer of rhythm, and a poet in motion. With over 70 recordings as a leader, his vast and untamed body of work sprawls across jazz, new music, experimental realms, and multi-dimensional artistic expression—dance, silent film, spoken word, and beyond.
He is, as The Wire aptly declares, “an iconoclast, and one of the most innovative musicians and drummers of his generation.” But that doesn’t quite capture it, does it? Hooker is an instigator, an energy field, and a sonic prophet. Nowhere is this more evident than on his latest album, Jubilation.
Jubilation is like a living, breathing document of momentary truth. A collision of atoms. Joining him in this ritual of sound are Matt LaVelle on trumpet, Stevie Manning on alto saxophone, On Davis on guitar, and Adam Lane on bass.
The album, Hooker’s fourth release for Org Music (following Flesh and Bones [2023], Big Moon [2021], and Symphonie of Flowers [2019]), is a testament to the ecstatic power of unfiltered improvisation.
Hooker describes the intention behind Jubilation with characteristic directness: “Our express purpose was to play great music and to communicate such.”
And communicate they do.
The group, recorded live in 2023 at Brooklyn’s performance space Roulette, embarks on a journey of perpetual becoming. The sound unfolds like a storm building on the horizon, with each player stepping forward and offering extended solos that hover between the spoken and the unspeakable.
It is music that listens to itself as it is being born. It is a process, a reckoning, a joyful noise. And yes, it is jubilation (noun: a feeling of great happiness and triumph).
To call William Hooker a jazz musician is both correct and wildly insufficient. He is a distiller of chaos, a navigator of the unseen, a relentless seeker. His drumsticks are quills, inscribing percussive poetry onto the blank page of time.
His words, often woven into his performances, blur the boundary between rhythm and language, making an instrument of breath itself. Last year’s Symphonie of Flowers was a blooming, multi-part sonic novel that unfurled in the listener’s mind like an infinite garden.
Since 1974, Hooker has been an unswerving force on the outer edges of jazz—though “jazz” is a mere signpost, a word too small for his boundless explorations. His kinetically charged, free-time drumming style is an engine of transformation, propelling his collaborations with some of the most fearless improvisers across generations and genres.
Avant-jazz, noise rock, free improvisation—these are merely coordinates on a much larger map. What Hooker is after cannot be contained in a single idiom or tradition. It is untamed. It is elemental. It is now.
So listen. But listen deeply. Jubilation is not background music. It does not politely wait in the corner. It demands presence and participation.
It is the sound of risk, of communion, of pure, unrelenting creation. And it is happening—right now.
Check out Jubilation by William Hooker on Bandcamp here.
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