Jaleel Shaw, Painter of the Invisible Review

by Icrom Bigrad

Jaleel Shaw is back after a 13-year hiatus with a contemporary spiritual jazz purpose. Painter of the Invisible is charged with rhythm in a soul-forward suite that honors people, places, and moments. Every track on this album has a direction that, together, forms a portrait of a modern jazz artist looking inward to express the music outward.

Backed by an intuitive ensemble of Lawrence Fields on piano and Rhodes, Ben Street on bass, and Joe Dyson on drums, with spot-on guest appearances from Sasha Berliner (vibes) and Lage Lund (guitar), Shaw steers a collective that knows how to listen, react, and elevate.

Take “Beantown,” for example. It’s a rhythmic melody with layers of polymetric cleverness: piano, bass, and drums each offer a jazz origami unfolding in real time. The melody dances across those layers, a boppish island affair in the Rollins tradition, blending Caribbean lilt with bebop intricacy. When the melody repeats, Fields joins in with contrapuntal canons that chase the head like echoes in a hall of mirrors. Shaw’s solo? All about phrasing—long, connected lines that build, pause, and lock in with rhythmic hits that keep your head bobbing and your ear dialed in.

And “Tamir” offers an honest expression of spiritual rhythms. Dyson opens with multidimensional percussion textures that feel ancestral, before Street steps into a rubato solo. From there, the tune morphs into a modal, spiritual-jazz pocket, with Shaw’s active solo hovering above it in full control. His solo burns bright with a rising in energy until Fields takes over with a climax that taps into the energy of swinging spiritual jazz.

On “Meghan,” Shaw reaches for his soprano sax, and in doing so, he reaches into fresh timbres and expressions. This one’s dedicated to the late Meghan Stabile, a vital force in the modern jazz ecosystem. What makes this track so powerful isn’t just the tribute itself, but the way Shaw tells her story in sound. His phrasing is patient, deliberate. There’s space—real, lived-in space—between the lines. This is narrative soloing. Five-and-a-half minutes of memory set to melody, and improv.

“The Invisible Man” is tune is its recalibration point—a blast of energy and invention. Lage Lund joins the fold and instantly widens the palette. His guitar brings a contemporary folk jazz hue to the groove, with phrasing that’s all about structure: every line has a beginning, middle, and end. Fields feeds off that momentum, lifting his piano solo with angularity and flow. The rhythm section, always in sync, pulls the ensemble together with a groove that swoops, sways, and pushes, keeping the whole thing locked and moving.

Throughout Painter of the Invisible, Shaw shows he’s a communicator. These compositions groove, they breathe, and they speak. Whether it’s gospel-tinged beauty on “Until We Meet Again” or the intimate shimmer of “Gina’s Ascent,” the entire album reflects a deep trust among the musicians, with the listener, and in the music itself. Painter of the Invisible captures influences who shaped Shaw’s journey, and he is now using his voice to pass that light forward.