Ra Kalam Bob Moses and the Heart Breath Ensemble at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem

Ra Kalam Bob Moses and the Heart Breath Ensemble
The National Jazz Museum in Harlem
New York, NY
January 22, 2026

The concert by Ra Kalam Ra Kalam Bob Moses—as the veteran drummer is now known—and the Heart Breath Ensemble on Thursday was not what it seemed at first glance, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The afternoon set at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem was unexpectedly free-wheeling. Yet Moses and five colleagues pulled off an engaging hour of in-the-moment creativity.

The runup to the show suggested a scripted event. Less than an hour before the concert, Elma, the drummer's wife and self-described "secretary," was assembling scores on the museum's chairs, and filling in this reporter on her efforts to better organize and promote her husband's compositions over his five-plus decade career—more than 400 of them, she says, many of them unrecorded.

As the set began, though, Moses—who is as warm and engaging as he is spontaneous—announced that he had not wanted to burden the band with "arrangements and rehearsal," and so the set would be entirely an improvisation. "At our age, with all our experience, we can make up something and hopefully be cohesive, or at least from the heart."

His faith was borne out in a set that indeed had coherence, thanks to the stellar musicianship on the bandstand and the willingness of the players to both listen closely and take musical chances. Unlike some free improvisations, especially with so many musicians involved, it began confidently. Moses kicked it off, with Daniel Carter soon joining in on flute. As the others came in, the music built to a gentle boil through chattering conversations between the three reed and horn players, before reducing to a simmer of longer and more reflective phrases.

This was, it transpired, the first time this particular band had ever convened, and Moses' first time ever playing with at least one of the players, guitarist Brandon Ross. As the front line quieted a few minutes into the set, Ross stepped in with a near-solo passage, featuring lead lines subtly colored by effects from the pedals arrayed at his feet. Ross gently traded phrases with bassist Don Pate—who has recorded with Moses on several projects by guitarist Tisziji Munoz—before the others joined in again.

Tenor player Michael Adkins more than held his own through the set. Yet it was hard not to focus on the two front-line players who have worked together so memorably with Moses—dating back to at least the mid-1970s, when both Carter and trumpeter Randy Brecker participated in Bittersuite In The Ozone (Atlantic Records, 1975), the album Moses described from the stage as his "masterpiece."

In Thursday's set, multi-instrumentalist Carter often adopted a leading role. Pulling up one of the seven instruments before him—soprano, alto and tenor saxophone, along with trumpet, clarinet and flute—Carter would chart a course that frequently led the ensemble in a new direction. Brecker, however diverse his career, has been little associated with free improvisation—his 50-plus-year discography contains essentially no improv sessions. But he rose to the moment with a number of probing solos and proved to be a sensitive listener. Now 80, Brecker also demonstrated technical chops that are blissfully intact.

Moses was a democratic leader, leaving the front line to take the initiative for much of the set—and only occasionally seeking to direct the proceedings. Much of his playing was small in scale, employing a wide range of handheld percussion and more often coloring the sound than driving the beat. He gently pounded handheld drums, did sweeps across a stand of small shells, and pinged the likes of a stand of coils to an odd nested triangular gizmo he struck atop his snare drum until, to his amusement, it fell off the drum's head.

That final piece kicked off after a request to Ross from Moses to "lead us in a prayer to bring these lovely people home." The guitarist began quietly and, true to the request, with a contemplative feel. Others picked up on the mood, leading to some of the afternoon's loveliest moments, with a tapestry of horns and guitar playing atop gentle rattling from Moses. It was a fittingly sweet conclusion to a set that, as Moses correctly described it, in his thanks to the band, was "full of soul."

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