Jazz saxophonist Seventh Sun releases a bright and blistering collaborative debut 

What is jazz? Well, if you ask a young saxophonist and composer who goes by the name Seventh Sun, he’d say it’s everything. His newly released debut recording honors the genre’s traditions and collaborative spirit while exploring its infinite possibilities.

The 25-year-old tenor sax player has long dreamed of making an album. In recent years he’s been honing tunes at Boston jazz venues including Darryl’s and Wally’s with buddies he met at Berklee College of Music. But getting his posse of ambitious musicians together to button up an LP has been tricky. “Because we've been working on a lot of different projects,” Seventh Sun said. “We play weddings, we do so many things.”

Something else Seventh Sun does weekly is perform during services at Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Dorchester. “I was supposed to come here for one gig,” he explained, “and I never left.”

Seventh Sun and his bandmates gathered at the church on a recent, sweltering afternoon to rehearse for their album’s release party. They set up and tuned their instruments in front of the altar as fans whirred in the background. Reverend Miniard Culpepper arrived.

“I wasn't expecting to see him,” Seventh Sun said. “I did text him last week to ask if he could come bless us.” The reverend knows the musician by his birth name, Craig Jackson.

“Craig plays with us on Sunday morning,” Culpepper told the group. “He can be a rabble-rouser sometimes, but the Lord has given him a gift. And when we come in sometimes that saxophone makes all the difference.” After asking the musicians to gather in a circle and hold hands, he continued, “I’m gonna have a prayer for your success, the community needs a joyful noise, we really do.”

One of Seventh Sun’s trailblazing mentors shared a similar sentiment with him after they first met five years ago at Lincoln Center's summer jazz clinic.

“You have to make noise where you are,” Wynton Marsalis told him.

The musicians did just that at the church by launching into a blistering tune titled, “Black Eastern Warrior.” It's a tribute to jazz drummer and Berklee professor Ralph Peterson Jr., who died in 2021. The Art Blakey protégé, who nurtured a new generation of jazz artists, introduced Seventh Sun to Buddhism and indigenous Asian culture.

Seventh Sun played in Peterson’s big band with drummer Christian Napoleon. They met as high schoolers in their home state of Ohio at a Latin jazz camp. Napoleon (aka Napo) tried to recall exactly when his best friend wrote “Black Eastern Warrior.”

“Like, he was about 21, 19, 20?” Napo guessed. Then he described how Seventh Sun bounded into the room, ecstatic, after nailing the driving composition's lines/sound. “He came with the energy,” Napo said, “and it’s the fastest song we have to date.”

Napo recalled how they listened deeply to all kinds of music as they developed songs for the album. Its namesake called the release “Seventh Sun” for a reason.

“Seven is my lucky number, I was born on June 7th,” he explained, “and I chose seven songs that will give each part of me — just like your seven chakras, the seven days of the week, the Seven Seas.”

On the album’s rendition of Roy Hargrove’s “Mental Phrasing,” MC Kwasi Stampley unfurls a stream of lyrics about daily thoughts and routines that dance with Seventh Sun’s saxophone. “It’s a composition about how I am,” he explained, “and what I do each day. Even the unexpected changes that come up.”

An endearing, open-minded spirit of curiosity drives Seventh Sun’s explorations. He’s a multi-instrumentalist who played classical clarinet as a kid. “Classical and jazz, those are major foundations for sight reading and listening,” he said, “and hopefully they allow you to do whatever after that.”

Seventh Sun won a full scholarship to Berklee in 2017. He finds inspiration in jazz traditions like hard bop, his teachers and genre-defying crossover artists who blend hip-hop, neo-soul and jazz to create new sounds. As an example, he pointed specifically to Kendrick Lamar’s collaborations on the 2015 album “How to Pimp a Butterfly.”

“I’m always looking for what's not being done yet,” Seventh Sun said. “I’m really choosing the composer's route because I want to write for everybody."

Seventh Sun’s expansive, collaborative style evokes a continuum forged by the jazz pioneers who came before them, according to guitarist Chris Hanford II.

“You think about Miles Davis and Coltrane, these are people that were steeped in history, but then found members of their own tribe to create a new tribe,” he said, “And so I feel like every one of ourselves is a singular voice that helps to add to Seventh Sun’s vision, and it’s really a pleasure to see the development and growth in all of us.”

Hanford added jazz is all about being yourself. When he arrived from Harlem to study at Berklee in 2017, he was finding his musical voice. “The first person that truly believed in me to play jazz was Seventh Sun,” he said.

Seventh Sun also found keyboardist JT Ho-Mueller through Berklee. “I really can't say I've met an individual that is like Seventh Sun,” the 21-year-old musician said. “His poise, his absolute command of his personality, and knowing what he wants is why the album is going to sound the way it sounds.”

Seventh Sun was moved to hear his bandmates reflect on his role in their artistry. Watching the puzzle pieces of his debut album fall into place over the past few years has given him a sense of direction. “Being artists is tough, we all know that,” he said, “but it’s nothing else that I can see myself doing. That's the air we breathe.”

Seventh Sun performs August 11 at the Courtland Club in Providence and August 29 at Long Live Beerworks in Roxbury.