James Brandon Lewis Quartet sets June release with Chad Taylor on drums

Chad Taylor is the name that makes Omni jump out of Intakt’s June slate for drummers. The James Brandon Lewis Quartet’s sixth album lands June 26 on Intakt as CD 457, and the lineup puts Taylor behind a band built around James Brandon Lewis on tenor saxophone, Aruán Ortiz on piano, and Brad Jones on bass.

That matters because Intakt is not treating this as a routine pre-order. The album was recorded October 27 and 28, 2025, at Hardstudios Winterthur in Switzerland by Michael Brändli, and the label ties it to the quartet’s long-running Molecular Systematic Music concept, a system that grew from six- or seven-note scales into a twelve-tone approach. Intakt also says Omni introduces a new gesture it calls twelve-tone gospel, which signals a record where the drummer’s pulse, color, and pacing are built into the composition, not just laid over it.

For Taylor, that is the real draw. His role here is not background support, it is the engine room of a group that has already been recognized outside the jazz-label echo chamber, including the German Jazz Award as Band of the Year 2023. The quartet has spent years documenting this language at Intakt, with earlier releases including Molecular in 2020, Code Of Being in 2021, MSM Molecular Systematic Music - Live in 2022, Transfiguration in 2024, and Abstraction Is Deliverance in 2025. Omni picks up that same core personnel again, which tells you the chemistry is the point.

Intakt’s framing also gives the release extra weight. The Zurich-based label says it has fostered international artist collaboration since 1986 and now has an archive of more than 400 albums, a catalog deep enough to know when a rhythm section is carrying real conceptual force. Intakt’s own 2026 recognition, the Special Prize for Music from Switzerland’s Federal Office of Culture, only sharpens that backdrop.

So if you are tracking the June Intakt rollout for the drummer angle, Omni is the one to line up first. The release date is the headline, but the bigger story is the Taylor factor: a veteran quartet, a tightly structured concept, and a record that should reward anyone listening for how Chad Taylor turns time, space, and group movement into the frame around James Brandon Lewis.