Album
The Next Step
Recorded Unknown — recording date not provided in source material · Verve Records · Produced by Unknown — producer not identified in source material
Where Smalls Club Became a Bandstand
Rosenwinkel's band played with such dramatic fire it would consume everything in the room.
The Next Step emerged from New York's Smalls Jazz Club, where Rosenwinkel's working band developed these pieces through repeated performance. The club's owner recalled the band playing with dramatic fire, and that intensity — forged in front of live audiences night after night — seeped into the recording. These weren't fresh arrangements worked out in the studio. They were seasoned, tested, lived-in by the time they reached tape. That distinction matters. You hear it in the way the tunes breathe, in how the band moves through changes without hesitation.
Rosenwinkel described the album as a culmination, a decade's worth of musical and personal work finally crystallizing into one statement. Several compositions here would become his signature pieces, re-appearing on later albums including Deep Song and Star of Jupiter. That kind of staying power is rare — most bands write new material for each project. Instead, Rosenwinkel held onto these tunes, continued developing them, kept mining them for depth. It's a working musician's approach rather than a product-cycle approach.
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gave it three and a half stars, a solid mark that places it among his substantial efforts. This is his second record for Verve, and it represents a genuine step forward from what came before — a record where club sessions and studio discipline met on equal ground. For listeners new to Rosenwinkel, The Next Step is worth the entry point rather than a later reference.
