Drummer, pianist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and (since he’s still only 25) wunderkind Julius Rodriguez has spent several years as a sideman for some of America’s brightest: Kurt Elling, Keyon Harrold and Wynton Marsalis among them. As a long-time member of Isaiah Barr’s Onyx Collective he’s collaborated with A$AP Rocky and members of the Wu Tang Clan, and has cited influences – Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk – passed down by his jazz-loving dad.

Let Sound Tell All, Rodriguez’s 2021 debut on Verve, had many critics in raptures for its push-the-boat out mix of effects, electronics, swinging acoustic stylings and choice of collaborators including the gifted Samara Joy. Evergreen eschews genre, opting to present different worlds within each track; opener ‘Mission Statement’ is a Hancock-esque excursion on keys that follows a melodic line to a cliff edge; a cover of ‘Many Times’ by leftfield R&B act Dijon has washes of strings moving into bouts of muscular pianism before concertina-ing into glitchy beats, chattering cymbals and electronic bleeps then out into propulsive piano, all of it bold, prodigious, F-you audacious. Keyon Harrold features, golden trumpet in hand, on ‘Love Everlasting’; Georgia Anne Muldrow unleashes impassioned vocals over chanted exhortations and classical, then experimental, piano on ‘Champion’s Call’, a closer strafed with pathos.

Not so much a masterwork as a master at play, Evergreen will likely stand the test of time.