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Steven Bernstein first saw the late, great New Orleans pianist Henry Butler play in 1984. "He was genius-level brilliant, man," he says, still marveling. "I couldn't believe there was a guy who could sound like the most ancient music and the most futuristic music at the same time." (Which is an apt description of Bernstein's music too.) Fourteen years later, Bernstein took Hal Willner's recommendation and hired Butler to play in the touring band that played the score for Robert Altman's film Kansas City. In 2013, the two musicians formed The Hot 9, the name a tip of the fedora to Louis Armstrong's landmark Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions of the 1920s. They released the acclaimed Viper's Drag album the following year, and toured until Butler's untimely passing in 2018. "Henry-isms" is Bernstein's term for the rhythmic and harmonic idiosyncrasies in Butler's piano playing. For his inventive arrangements, Bernstein isolated those Henryisms and distributed them to different musicians in The Hot 9, so now Butler's style was emulated by an entire ten-piece band, effectively turning his piano into an orchestra. While Butler is no longer here to play the arrangements that Bernstein wrote for him, his spirit remains deep in this music. "I wanted to document these arrangements," Bernstein says, "while we still had Henry’s feeling in our bodies." But, without Butler's resounding musical presence, Bernstein urged the band to go its own way. "We know what he taught us," he says, "so let's take that and make it ours. We're carrying it forward." On Manifesto of Henry-isms, Bernstein and the band carry on that Butler-esque mix of ancient and futuristic, innovation with a reverence for tradition, embracing the virtuosity, ingeniousness and jaunty swing of early New Orleans jazz but incorporating all kinds of music that happened in the meantime. Pan-Latin jazz master Arturo O'Farrill's piano-playing is both visceral and brainy like Butler's was, but with his own unique sense of harmonic fearlessness, Afro-Latin rhythmic influences and NYC-bred bravado. And while bassist Brad Jones and drummer Donald Edwards impart an authentic Big Easy swing, John Medeski’s playful, percolating organ playing gives The Hot 9 a brand new flavor.