Listen to Nabil Muquit Quartet’s scorching live set from Turtle Studios

Raised in Philadelphia and schooled in New Orleans, sax player / composer Nabil Muquit returned home this year and shows off his new quartet on COVID Sessions: Live at Turtle Studios, newly released on Bandcamp.

A graduate of the Loyola University School of Music, Muquit’s music fuses cool grooves, racing energy, and earnest solos, and the Turtle set produced by Jay Levin mixes a handful of originals with covers of Nirvana and Kanye West.

He’s joined by keys player Micah Graves — perviously profiled here for his songs “Ladybug for Jasmine” and the collaborative “Being A Black Man In America” — as well as drummer Julian Milten Berger and Morgan Guerin on bass. You can feel the energy in the room on the opening “Can You Feel It,” an immersive expanse that reaches such a fever pitch that the recording sounds blown out at points.

“Milk And Honey” finds Graves and Berger guiding the song’s racing pace for 7 and a half minutes, while the covers are more contemplative. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is reinvented as a slow groove, while “Flashing Lights” is languid and loging, a hard bop / soul groove with an impassioned Graves solo.

Listen to COVID Sessions: Live at Turtle Studio below and check out Muquit’s early singles on Bandcamp. For more, follow him on Instagram at @nabilmuquittt.