Jazz 08 Part Three: Top Ten Albums of the Year

I understand that it is now in verve for critics to replace their annual top ten lists with alphabetical, formless, un-fun lists of albums that are "the best, in this critic's humble opinion." Anyone who reads this blog knows by now that this sort of meaningless, politically-correct list isn't quite my style. Hence, I'm kicking it old-school: numbered from ten to one, here are the best jazz albums of the year. Feel free to disagree with the picks or lament the lack of your favorite record in the comments section:

10. "Invisible Cinema" by Aaron Parks: Parks, who is shaping up to be the pianist of choice for the current crop of youngsters on the jazz scene, made his Blue Note debut as a leader with "Invisible Cinema," a record with a ridiculously opaque plot that doesn't seem to actually matter. The music is like prog rock with jazz musicians; Mike Moreno's guitar pyrotechnics recall Pat Metheny and Johnny Greenwood in equal parts.

9. "The Remedy" by Kurt Rosenwinkel: With "The Remedy," Kurt Rosenwinkel has proved yet again that he deserves to be this generation's most influential voice on guitar. As opposed to playing licks, Rosenwinkel plays fluid, seemingly random lines. There is a tragic element of this record though; saxophonist Mark Turner recently lost two fingers in an accident, and the jazz scene's loss is monumental.

8. "Party Intellectuals" by Marc Ribot: PARTY PARTY PARTY PARTY... Marc Ribot's free-rock trio is so good that you forget that you're listening to a jazz musician who plays with John Zorn. Like last year's "Draw Breath," by The Nels Cline Singers, songs alternate between noisy, violent free improvisations and the loudest, booty shaking party music ever.

7. "Live" by The Brad Mehldau Trio: For my money, Brad Mehldau is the best piano player alive and working in the jazz idiom. While older musicians like Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett recieve all of the accolades, Mehldau has proven himself repeatedly with his trio on records like live. The interplay between him, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard recalls both Jarrett's standards trio and Bill Evans' great trio, but creates music all its own. Mehldau covers pop songs ("Wonderwall" and "Black Hole Sun" here) without a hint of irony, and plays them like standards. Every track is a highlight.

6. "Kinsmen" by Rudresh Mahanthappa: Mahanthappa's septet on this record consists of a jazz quartet augmented by an Indian classical music trio. While there have been numerous other attempts to fuse the two musics, "Kinsmen" sounds like nothing else ever released in the jazz idiom. Saxophonists Mahanthappa and Kadri Gopalnath duel brilliantly on the tracks "Ganesha" and "Convergence (Kinsmen)."

5. "Crossing the Field" by Jenny Scheinman: "Crossing the Field," which features a full orchestra without sounding even remotely corny, is violinist Jenny Scheinman's best album yet. Her scrappy rural lyricism shines next to Bill Frisell's guitar and Jason Moran's piano, and her original compositions are alternatingly haunting, quaint, and beautiful. It makes sense that her other release this year was a set of spunkily sung versions of folk songs; her violin playing has the same weary, gorgeous quality as her voice.

4. "Esperanza" by Esperanza Spalding: Guilty pleasure of the year. Hands down. I could listen to Esperanza Spalding go on and on about her boy trouble for hours straight, and have. While her first album, "Junjo," was a straight-ahead date that showcased her bass playing, "Esperanza" is more of a contemporary R&B record with acoustic instruments and a latin-jazz tinge. Just listen to "Precious" and try not to get indignant about Esperanza's awful boyfriend (Can you believe he wanted her to change for him?), or, if you're in a jazz mood, get a hear of the catchy and wordless "I Adore You," the album's best track.

3. "The Door" by Mathias Eick: There are videos on youtube of Mathias Eick exploding with incredibly fast high-note runs, but that could not be further from "The Door." The quietest album of the year, "The Door" features the sort of lyricism expected from someone much older than the young Eick. His debut showcases the influence of earlier ECM artists and a little bit of the sound of his main gig, Jaga Jazzist, but really sounds like nothing else. If you could translate the feel and look of an intricate ice-sculpture into a jazz album, you would wind up with something a lot like "The Door."

2. "History, Mystery" by Bill Frisell: "History, Mystery" is easily Bill Frisell's most cohesive album since "Nashville," if not since "Have A Little Faith." The band is something like a who's who of the rural jazz movement: Jenny Scheinman and Eyvind Kang take up the strings, Ron Miles plays trumpet, and the perennial rhythm section of Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen anchors the proceedings. The album's sound is evocative of Americana circa 1950 or 1960; a melting pot of blues, country, bebop, soul, tango, Copland-style classical music and pretty much anything else Frisell sets his sights on. The record is set up as two different suites that go together, the first framed by different versions of "Probability Cloud," and the second by versions of "Monroe."

1. "Tragicomic" by Vijay Iyer: While "History Mystery" presents a beautiful fantasy version of the world, "Tragicomic" presents the world precisely as it is: dark, claustrophobic, complicated, and more often than not downright scary. Of course, Iyer treats it as a joke: the second track is named "Macaca Please" after former Virginia senator George Allen's now famous slur, while the music bludgeons you over the head like a blunt weapon. The album's only moment of respite, which comes in the form of a beautiful solo piano take on "I'm All Smiles" ends in an unsure vamp, and is almost immediately drowned out by the death march and subsequent riot of "Machine Days." Iyer's long-standing quartet with Rudresh Mahanthappa, Stephen Crump, and Marcus Gilmore has made a record that isn't for the faint of heart, but has more to say about the state of the world than most jazz. I said in April that this was going to be Iyer's year, and it was.

Jazz 08 Part Two: Superlatives!

Chances are you read my end-of-the-year essay on the state of jazz (I pronounced it alive and well, albeit in a sub-cultural way) and said to yourselves, "damn, what insight," but I'm glad to see that someone disagrees with me on Sonny Rollins. I have heard from numerous (occasionally reliable, but mostly drunken) sources that Sonny is as great as ever live. I heard his new record (review forthcoming), and I suppose it's good; there just isn't anything new or ground-breaking about it, especially in a year in which Marian McPartland plays free jazz and Lee Konitz releases albums with teenage wunderkinds. I also saw him live a year or so ago at Lincoln Center and was dully unimpressed; granted, word on the street is that Sonny has on nights and off nights going back to the fifties. Either way, the point of this post is not to argue about Sonny Rollins' relevance to the jazz world right now, but to name some superlatives as a companion piece to my top ten, which will make it to this site in the near future.

Biggest Upset: Jon Irabagon's surprising (yet well deserved) win at this year's Monk Competition

Craziest Saxophone Solo: Greg Tardy's absurdly funky, out choruses on Bill Frisell's version of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come."

Most Likely to Cut An Idol: Rudresh Mahanthappa; just check out the fours he trades with Kadri Gopalnath on the title track of "Kinsmen."

Best Straight Bluegrass Record from A Jazz Musician: Charlie Haden's "Rambling Boy"

Most Meteoric Rise: This one's a tie. Esperanza Spalding, who was pretty much unknown outside of dorky jazz circles last year, released a hit record and was named Rising Star Bassist of the Year in Downbeat. Mathias Eick, who has played on every Norwegian record with a trumpet in the past few years, gained international acclaim at the final IAJE Conferencer ever and released one of the best albums of the year with "The Door."

Hippest Singer You've Probably Never Heard of: Becca Stevens

Jazz' Most Beloved Indie Pop Duo: The Bird and the Bee

Jazz' Most Beloved Bluegrass Duo: Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer

Movement to Gain Most Steam: Rural Jazz

Least Likely to Release an Album for Another Ten Years: Brian Blade

Most Predictable Yearly Downbeat Poll: This is a tough one. Most years this category would wind up being a tie between Downbeat's annual Critic's Poll and Downbeat's annual Readers' Poll, but I suppose the edge this year goes to the readers, who were so predictable that I wish I had done a "guess the Readers' Poll" feature.

Jazz 08 Part One: This Year in Jazz!

I'm just going to come out and say it- disagree if you want, but this is an honest belief of mine- 2008 has been the best year for new jazz in a long, long time. Everything seemed to come together in 2008; 90 year olds released some of the best albums of their careers (Marian McPartland and Buddy DeFranco) and other well-established artists made some major leaps (Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Brad Mehldau). Most of the best records came from artists on the periphery of the jazz establishment, either too weird or too young: artists like Vijay Iyer, his cohort Rudresh Mahanthappa, Esperanza Spalding, Jenny Scheinman, Mathias Eick... the list goes on and on.

Even the disappointments weren't that bad (of course there are exceptions; the Wynton and Willie record was deathly boring, and Dianne Reeves' latest was unlistenable); when Ambrose Akinmusire's "Prelude to Cora" can be put on any kind of list of disappointments you know it was a good year. Perhaps the most surprising moments of the year came with the announcement of the year's MacArthur Fellowships (in a bad way) and Monk Institute Competition winners (in a surprising and sorta good way).

Of course the jazz media fixated on the same boring old people it always does (Sonny Rollins is, for probably the fortieth year in a row, the tenor saxophonist of the year according to Downbeat critics in spite of the fact that he doesn't perform regularly and didn't release an album this year) as opposed to focusing on the cool old people it tends to ignore (McPartland and DeFranco spring to mind- and I'm convinced that the only way Lee Konitz can get into the Downbeat Hall of Fame at this point is by dying).

The music this year speaks for itself, however. Rural Jazz has hit its peak with records like "History Mystery" and "Crossing the Field," and the Jewish Jazz scene only gets better with every barely-heard Tzadik release by somebody like Daniel Zamir or Paul Shapiro. And of course there's Esperanza, the girl of the moment, who deserves to be the next Norah Jones (perhaps the only Norah Jones). Young Ms. Spalding came out of nowhere (well, I'd heard of her, but I also go to Berklee), was suddenly featured on the cover of every jazz magazine and played on Letterman and Kimmel over the course of a week, not to mention her emergence as one of the go-to bassists of the Monk generation.

All in all, a stellar year. Next time on the Jazz Monster I'll have part two of my Jazz 08 series: The Superlatives, all leading up to the final edition of the Jazz 08, my top ten. So tune in a few days, because there's more to come.

Esperanza! (Spalding)

I'd like to set the record straight: I love the young bass player Esperanza Spalding's first album, "Junjo." I love the way it sounds like virtually nothing else in jazz; the wordless, expressive vocals sometimes highlighting a melody, occasionally sung along with the bass solo... the way that the band manages to sound minimal and huge at the same time due to the total lack of overdubs... the way you could hear Spalding's energy (albeit quiet, contained energy) just bursting at the seams of the recording, but never quite taking over to a point of destroying the piano trio aesthetic present. When I found out that Spalding would be singing much more (and with lyrics!) on her new album "Esperanza," I was afraid that the barely contained aesthetic of "Junjo" would be gone forever, replaced by a latin-flavored Norah Jones record; Esperanza would succumb to pressure from her other Monk-generation compatriot Ambrose Akinmusire to go R&B, and she would create the worst of all jazz travesties: a crossover record.

Upon first listen, I realized that all of my worst fears had been realized. After a second run through, all I could think was "why did she abandon the wordless vocals and obscure covers of 'Junjo' for this song-writer stuff?" Finally, about an hour ago, I realized that I've listened to this album ten times in the past two days. And then, as I began writing this, I figured it out. I love this album. All of the vocals with lyrics? Gorgeous; she has an incredible voice suited well for everything from Portuguese (the sing-song opener, "Ponta De Areia," is a cover of a tune by Brazilian song-writer Milton Nascimento) to Spanish. The R&B stuff? Beautiful. And somehow, in addition to all of this, she manages to throw in a track with the wordless vocals I loved from "Junjo," called "I Adore You," which will make it onto every mix CD I make for anyone in the coming year, and at least two brilliant straight ahead tracks, including a version of "Body and Soul," sung in Spanish and played in 5/4 (with a killer bass solo), and a post-bop instrumental dedicated to drummer Francisco Mela.

Even the most blatantly cross-over material on here manages to be worth listening to. "Precious," a song about being wronged by a lover that has no right to be anything but cliched, manages to come out as one of the album's most compulsively listenable tracks. "She Got to You," also about being wronged by a lover, contains some of pianist Leo Genovese's best work on the whole record. In fact, every band member does incredible work on this; Jamey Haddad's percussion is great throughout the album, as is Otis Brown's work on the drumset. As for the guest spots, which include Ambrose Akinmusire, Donald Harrison, and (not nearly enough) Gretchen Parlato, each only appears on a few tracks, leaving you wanting more.

I would love it if Esperanza Spalding were the next Norah Jones, and I think the world would be a happier place in general if people listened to this album in the least cynical way possible. Highly recommended.

Next time I'll have a review of David Sanchez' "Cultural Survival," and maybe something else. I was initially thinking I'd do a two-fer with "Esperanza," but I gave up on it when I started writing.

Top Five(ish) Jazz Tunes of the Spring!

As I've said over and over again, so far this has been an incredible year for jazz; while it doesn't look like the flow of brilliant albums and tracks will let up in the near future, I thought it was worth commemorating what may well be the best spring in jazz since the fifties with something of a Top Five list. The problem (if you can call it a problem) is that after listing a large number of my favorite tunes since March or so and then whittling it down, I was incapable of creating a list of less than eight. I've tried to link you to the song wherever possible. So here you are, in alphabetical order, my almost-top-five of Spring 2008:

"A Change is Gonna Come" by Bill Frisell: Bill Frisell is quite possibly the single most interesting musician to gain status as one of Jazz's premier artist. He got his start playing tons of sessions for ECM, and made a name for himself by spending half of his time with Paul Motian and the other half with John Zorn; for the past ten or so years he has divided his time between working with brilliant guitar trios and making country-jazz records. "A Change is Gonna Come" represents something of a departure; neither country nor jazz, the song is a cover of a Sam Cooke song from the 60s. Greg Tardy plays a ridiculously good tenor solo after Frisell himself finishes up his own trademark solo featuring a lot of space and some notes that nobody else would play.

"Cuerro Y Alama (Body and Soul)" by Esperanza Spalding: While I have not reviewed Esperanza Spalding's "Esperanza" yet (I haven't been able to get ahold of it in it's entirety), based on the tracks featured on her myspace- and this gem, a spanish 5/4 cover of Body and Soul, in particular- that it could be brilliant. At first, when I'd heard that she spent more time singing on this album than on her gorgeous, underplayed debut "Junjo," I was a little bit apprehensive, but her voice is beautiful, and her bass solo on this track is brilliant in a melodic way.

"HumSong (Skidrow Anthem) Remix" by Ambrose Akinmusire and Yellow Then Blue: While the original is without a question growing on me (the more I listen to the album, the more I feel like I may have been a little too harsh on Akinmusire; he really is a shining light in the new jazz scene, so I suppose my expectations were just too high), the remix of "HumSong" as done by Yellow Then Blue just has a vibrancy that the original is lacking. The entrance of Walter Smith III into the track almost halfway through is accompanied by particularly spastic drums, and the sequenced percussion only makes the track seem more innovative and vital. Smith and Akinmusire in passionately trade fours, and Smith hits notes with incredible intensity.

"Lonely Woman" by Marian McPartland: If one more person reminds me that Marian McPartland just turned 90 I may cry; on the basis of her recent "Twilight World" album, she is just as vital (if not more vital) as a musician as she was in the 50s. "Lonely Woman," an Ornette Coleman cover, somehow does manages to fit in with the rest of the album. The most
astonishing thing about her cover of "Lonely Woman" is that she, a ninety year old who came up in the hard bop scene, has managed to make one of the best free jazz recordings of the year.

"Nonvignon" by Lionel Loueke: I didn't love Lionel Loueke's "Karibu;" to be blunt, it wasn't accessible like his live show in spite of Blue Note's efforts to smooth out all of the rough edges in this music. "Nonvignon," however, is without a question Lionel Loueke's most beautiful song. While the version on "Karibu" isn't as great as an earlier solo version on "In A Trance" or the version I saw at his show in Oberlin- he got the audience to sing along-, there is no question that it is one of the best songs of the Spring. In spite of extended movements away from the normal harmony in the middle, Loueke always manages to come back to the gorgeous chords of the song. If more people listened to "Nonvignon" the world would be a much happier place.

"The Remedy" by Kurt Rosenwinkel: The title track of Kurt Rosenwinkel's new live album from the Village Vanguard has the best groove of any jazz song I've heard all year, perhaps the best groove since the title track of Kenny Werner's "Lawn Chair Society," and the band is absolutely incredible. The major stand-out (with the exception of Rosenwinkel, saxophonist Mark Turner, drummer Eric Harland... hell, everybody in this band is a stand-out), for me at least, is pianist Aaron Goldberg, who, while groaning along a la Keith Jarrett, plays one of the simplest, funkiest, most brilliant motivic lines I've ever heard during his solo.

"Threnody" by Vijay Iyer: I've already talked at length about this particular track on this blog, twice. To put it simply, Rudresh Mahanthappa is the most innovative, violent saxophone player in jazz right now, and by the time he comes into the picture you've already been mesmerized by Iyer's interplay with bassist Stephen Crump.

"Wonderwall" by Brad Mehldau: Brad Mehldau, like Kurt Rosenwinkel, has been less than prolific in recent years; "Live," the latest from his trio, was worth the wait. "Wonderwall," a rhythmically interesting (the bass plays in a different time signature from the piano and drums; but the band meets up during the bridge, creating a sort of Steve Coleman vibe without sounding at all like Steve Coleman) cover of an Oasis tune, features Mehldau's usual gorgeous, funky, restrained piano playing. Mehldau, more than anyone else in the jazz world, understands that less is more, and he's come a long way since his note-heavy early records. His music manages to be complex enough to satisfy a jazz snob or music school student, but is simple and catchy enough to be accessible to just about anyone.

Notes on the New Downbeat: Miguel Zenon's "Beautiful Combination" Adds Up to Less Than the Sum of its Parts, In My Opinion

First off, why does everyone love Miguel Zenon so much? Seriously, if you love Miguel Zenon comment and explain it to me, because after having heard "Jibaro" (I couldn't find "Awake" anywhere) and having seen him live twice (once with his quartet, once with SFJazz Collective; both very recently) all I got was that he could shed scale patterns really fast (like, really fast). Anyway though, here's Stefon Harris, possibly beating Stanley Crouch at the ridiculous praise game, talking about Miguel Zenon:

"Miguel has a beautiful combination of all the elements it takes to move a human being"

Uh... what?
On a totally different note, though, I was really glad to see Esperanza Spalding get an article to herself, her "Junjo" was great, and while I haven't heard her new album "Esperanza" yet, the tracks on her myspace are setting it up to be a real doozy. Also, props to Downbeat for featuring Mostly Other People Do The Killing in the "Players" section. They're awesome.

Also, Jamey Aebersold and David Baker (both of whom were involved in this year's IAJE conference) can't tell the difference between Sonny Rollins and David Murray? Is this some sort of bad dream? No wonder IAJE had to declare bankruptcy...

Tomorrow I'll either have a review of James Carter's "Present Tense" or a double bill review of John Ellis' "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow" and Third World Love's "New Blues," all three of which are absolutely killin'. I've said it a billion times, but this spring season is one to remember.