Community spirit has been a constant in the work of composer and trumpet player Sarah Wilson, whose experiences and inspirations have ranged from socially conscious puppet theater to brass band and New Orleans traditions to her own illuminating style of jazz. When musicians are truly inspired and connected with one another, Wilson describes, time seems to stand still for artist and listener alike.
“Time just evaporates,” Wilson says, “and you’re completely immersed in feeling the euphoria and joy of being in this creative moment. You forget everything else that is happening in space and time, while paradoxically the music is moving through time.”
During a 2023 artist residency in Krems, Austria, the Bay Area-based Wilson experienced a similar epiphany when she encountered the paintings of Viennese artist Thomas Reinhold. One of the founding figures of German “New Painting” or “Junge Wilde,” Reinhold’s large-scale work combines architectural planning with the chance effects of time. Wilson’s reaction to the paintings inspired the music on Incandescence, the joy-fueled new album by her sextet Brass Tonic.
Out July 18, 2025 via Wilson’s own Brass Tonic Records and co-produced by Wilson and Grammy Award-winning producer Hans Wendl, Incandescence was commissioned by InterMusic SF’s Musical Grant Program. It draws equal inspiration from Reinhold’s bold, multi-hued abstracts and from the street-level, community-spirited traditions of brass band, marching and New Orleans parade music. In Brass Tonic, Wilson combines an all-woman horn frontline – herself, alto saxophonist Kasey Knudsen, and trombonist Mara Fox – with the buoyant rhythm section of guitarist John Schott, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, and, for this recording, drummers Jon Arkin and Tim Bulkley.
Brass Tonic played its first gig in 2022, but the seeds for the band were planted more than 20 years before, when Wilson performed with and composed for NYC drummer Kenny Wollesen’s protest-minded marching jazz band, Himalayas. Or perhaps even earlier, when she toured the world playing music with Vermont’s politically radical and community-oriented Bread & Puppet Theater during the 1990s. “Coming from that background of street theater and traditional New Orleans music, my music is always something that you can dance to,” Wilson explains. “Marching band music has to be simple, but I wanted to hone it into more developed music with a similar vibe.”
Stemming in part from the socially conscious aspects of those earlier projects as well as her experience in ensembles like the Montclair Women’s Big Band, Wilson was determined to forefront women in her new sextet. “I wanted to be intentional about that,” she insists. “It feels empowering to have a majority of women in the band, and in particular to have all women horn players. That's one area in classical and jazz music, where there's a bit of a lag in terms of equity.”
Earlier music for the band was written in 2022 during Wilson’s time at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California. Through that connection, she traveled to Austria for the AIR-Artist in Residence Niederösterreich, through which she was given free rein to explore the arts-rich town of Krems, 50 miles outside of Vienna. There she found Reinhold’s work in the State Gallery of Lower Austria. “These incredible paintings just looked like music to me,” Wilson says.
Wilson has a history of composing music in response to visual art. In 2011-12 she was an artist fellow at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, where she collaborated on a music and aerial dance performance inspired by the Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglas. “She Stands in a Room,” one of the pieces on Wilson’s 2010 album Trapeze Project, drew from a sculpture by Nicolas Africano in the de Young’s collection.
At the State Gallery of Lower Austria, Wilson was given the unique opportunity to set up a mobile studio in the gallery, allowing her to write music in real time while interacting directly with the paintings. The residency also connected her with the artist himself, facilitating a trip to Reinhold’s studio to discuss his artistic methodology – including his love of John Coltrane’s music. “His process is based on a space time modality,” Wilson relates. “He imagines everything he's going to paint and sketches it out, which is very architectural. Then he layers coats of paint, goes off and lets it dry, and returns later to paint more layers – meaning that he's dealing with elements created in a different space and time.”
Three of the compositions on Incandescence – “Architecture in Space,” “Music Appears to Stand Still,” and “Echoes Refrain” – resulted from Wilson’s Austrian residency. But they share with the remainder of the album’s songs a bright, iridescent sense of joy and ebullience encapsulated in the album’s title.
“When you have visceral, powerful experience with art or music, that is the essence of joy for me,” Wilson concludes. “I really respond to that ability for music to evoke strong feelings. That’s what I really wanted to happen with this project. I want people to feel good and to have that experience of joy.”
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