More Silliness Courtesy of JazzTimes

I'm not going to pretend that I'm shocked that my pick for the best jazz album of the year (Vijay Iyer's "Tragicomic") didn't even make the JazzTimes top 50, or that I'm shocked that my top 10 only matched up once with their's (Bill Frisell's "History, Mystery," the second best album of the year in my list, was number 5 in JazzTimes'). I will, however, make a few short complaints:

JOE LOVANO'S "SYMPHONICA" AT NUMBER TWO?!???!?!?!

BOZ SCAGGS?!

ROBERTA GAMBARINI & HANK JONES?!

Now that that's over with, I can go back to writing like an educated journalist. While I'm sure that the Boz Scaggs and Gambarini/Jones releases filled some sort of quotient for "vocal jazz" albums on the list (Patricia Barber's "The Cole Porter Mix" and Cassandra Wilson's "Loverly" which are both actually good, also made the list at numbers 29 and 8, respectively). Of course, there has been good vocal jazz this year, and Boz Scaggs' place on the list over "Moss" is a travesty. In fact, I can barely think of a worse travesty than the lack of "Moss" on this list except in hypotheticals; like, for example, if Dianne Reeves' "When You Know" was named the album of the year.

Or, say, if Joe Lovano's "Symphonica" were named the best album of the year. Luckily, JazzTimes doesn't think that "Symphonica" is the single best album of the year (they think that The Charles Lloyd Quartet's "Rabo De Nube" is better, but nothing in my Top 10). I've already given my thoughts on Lovano's Symphonica here, writing any more about it would be like flogging a dead horse.

As for the rest of it, I was pretty happy to see that "Miles From India" (#6) got some love from JazzTimes, which is usually more accepting of new concepts than their older evil brother Downbeat, and that Carla Bley's "Appearing Nightly" (#7), which certainly would have made my list if I'd heard it just a week sooner, was featured in the top 10.

Jazz's Renaissance Through Rap?

It's not a jazz album. But so what? I've reviewed Girl Talk here before, and I didn't even bother with an excuse beyond the fact that it was one of the best albums of the year- why can't I write a review of one of the best rap albums of the year? Plus- and don't take this the wrong way, "The Renaissance" is a rap record, not one of the Jazz-with-a-capital-"J" variety- there are more brilliant young jazz musicians in one place here than you will find on many new jazz albums. The luminaries include keyboardist Robert Glasper, bassist Derrick Hodge, guitarist Mike Moreno, and another guitarist- perhaps you've heard of him- Kurt "Most Influential Jazz Guitar Player of His Generation" Rosenwinkel. If that name alone isn't enough to excuse me for writing about rap in this setting, what is?

There is no improvisation on "The Renaissance," and the musicians who are featured (mostly as parts of various live bands in the studio, believe it or not) are called upon to do nothing but groove. This is a good thing. Anyone who's listened to Glasper's "In My Element" or Rosenwinkel's latest, "The Remedy," know that these guys can groove better than anyone out there. The one track built off of samples, "Move," is the album's most ambitious track and one of its highlights. The beat, created by the late, great J Dilla, fits right in with the rest of the album, and if it weren't for Dilla's trademarked audible vinyl hiss, you wouldn't be able to tell that it was anything other than another live funky groove. Other highlights include "Life Is Better," which is perhaps the best piece of music that Norah Jones has ever attached her name to (she sings the hook), and the D'Angelo guest spot, "Believe."

Q-Tip's rapping is just as spot on as when he most recently released an album all the way back in 1999. "The Renaissance" is even better than "Amplified," though, which suffered from too much production. For the most part, as opposed to dissing other rappers (with the exception of the a capella beginning of "Dance on Glass"), Q-Tip is content to rap about history: "Life Is Better" consists almost entirely of shout-outs to all of his favorite MCs from Kool Herc to Lil Wayne.

As in 2007, the best rap record of 2008 was a battle-cry from an MC long off the scene; granted, Q-Tip is not quite the lyricist that Pharoahe Monch is, and "The Renaissance" doesn't have the same number of immediately quotable genius one-liners that can be found in "Desire" ("Think! Even you was ashes you couldn't urn," "I lay in the cut like neosporin," and about fifty others), but what "The Renaissance" lacks in immediate lyrical nastiness it more than makes up for in groove. The best moment on the record occurs near the beginning of "Believe," when the full band drops out with the exception of the bass and drums to allow Q-Tip to begin his rap like a percussive accompaniment: "Of the things we believe/there's a whole lot of work/ gotta roll up our sleeves." Who knows when Q-Tip will come out with another new record, but now that he's finally rolled his sleeves up he's come up with his best solo album, and one of the best albums of the year.

One Hell of an Overdue William Parker Review

As far as I can tell, I've been promising a review of William Parker's "Petit Oiseau" for at least three months. You're just going to have to take my word for it, though, that I have been incredibly, horrifically, hell, excruciatingly busy recently. As some of you know, I am a staff writer for the Berklee College of Music newspaper, The Groove, in addition to my responsibilities as a broke college student whose sources of income do not include amongst themselves "snarky jazz-blogging asshole." I do, however, keep up with the music (I can even get it for free now that I have two different papers I can use for credentials!), and whenever possible I plan on continuing to write reviews of new jazz albums and general nastiness about the jazz press (get excited for next time when I go through the Jazz Times Top 50, which includes Joe Lovano's syrupy "Symphonica" as the second best album of the year).

No one can accuse William Parker of being stingy or of allowing himself to sink into obscurity while other, younger free jazz musicians get all of the acclaim; he has appeared in a feature in Downbeat (remember the last time Downbeat had a feature article about a contemporary free jazz musician who wasn't young and sexy like Nicole Mitchell? Oh yeah, never) and has released two records a year since 2005. That said, however, Parker's recent outpouring of creativity has come at the expense of regular dates with his quartet, one of the best units in jazz. The last date, 2005's "Sound Unity," was the third part in a trilogy of sorts that included 2000's game-changing "O'Neal's Porch" and 2002's "Raining On the Moon." All three albums featured the trio playing lyrical free jazz in the OCDC ("Ornette Coleman Don Cherry") vein- the music was as melodic as any straight-ahead jazz but with enough craziness courtesy of saxophonist Rob Brown and Trumpeter Lewis Barnes that it retained its edge.

Those three records were all about the frontline, Barnes and Brown, coming up with crazy melodies. "Petit Oiseau" is all about the rhythm section, which in addition to Parker includes drummer and long-time co-conspirator Hamid Drake. The comparison's to Coleman's classic late-50s quartet are still relevant, of course, but by now Parker and Drake have been playing together for so long that they sound telepathic in comparison to Coleman's alternatingly madcap and pensive rhythm section of Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins. Besides, Parker is more interested in making his music funky: imagine an entire record of variations of the rhythm section part to Coleman's "Ramblin'" and you begin to get the idea. The grooves on tracks like "Grove Suite" and "The Golden Ball" recall funky world music, but with a looseness only heard in free jazz.

Of course, even though the focus has shifted a bit, Parker's horn players sound as good here as they do on his other records. Rob Brown's saxophone playing is rivaled in ferocity only by Rudresh Mahanthappa's, and on this album it is like an explosion in the center of Parker and Drake's grooves. Barnes, on the other hand, floats over the proceedings like the hummingbird on the album's cover. Together they make up the yin and yang in Parker's music; sometimes sweet, sometimes sour. On an uptempo number like "Four for Tommy," the difference in style becomes readily apparent: Barnes is interested in making music out of sheer sound, while Brown creates odd melodic and harmonic linear statements out of thin air.

Carla Bley, Appearing Nightly On Your CD Player

I hate to be the one to say it, but it seems like there is no question anymore that professional Big Band Jazz is dying. I'm not saying that Big Bands are dying; they will always live on in high schools and in the ghost bands that tour the country with monstrous young players and subdued, well-written charts. Of course there are Maria Schneider and Dave Holland, the newest to enter the Big Band fray and the ones who win all of the awards, but Holland never tours with his big band (and hasn't played a big band date in years) and Schneider can hardly afford to keep hers together. Well, thank God for Carla Bley, one of the most idiosyncratic writers in generation and one of the best big band arrangers (and writers) ever, and for her new album, "Appearing Nightly."

"Appearing Nightly" is credited to Carla Bley and her Remarkable Big Band, and features such killer on-the-cusp-of-fame musicians as trumpeter Lew Soloff, tenor saxophonist Andy Sheppard, drummer Billy Drummond, trombonist Gary Valente, and bassist Steve Swallow, to name only five. The playing is stellar all around, and everybody in the long-standing band can (and do) play the hell out of Bley's arrangements, which, presumably, they have been playing nightly for years. The first two tracks, "Greasy Gravy" and "Awful Coffee," in particular feature some brilliant soloing from the aforementioned musicians. "Awful Coffee," an uptempo burner, features a mind-altering and quotation-filled solo from Sheppard, and "Greasy Gravy," a slower, medium swing number, showcases Valente's odd ideas on trombone.

An album like "Appearing Nightly" is not about the solos though, and Bley's tunes and arrangements are brilliant and idiosyncratic. Bley, like a master chef putting her stamp on a dish that's been cooked by many brilliant cooks before her, takes a format and tunes that sound like they could have been written in 1950, and then turns them inside out with odd voicings and backign-figures. Granted, Bley is more of a traditionalist than, say, Bill Holman, who can take a Monk tune and make it sound like an acid trip in a house of mirrors (just listen to his "Brilliant Corners: The Music of Thelonious Monk" for a taste), but her charts are too weird and creative to simply be labled a rehash. She throws dissonant minor ninthson top of the melody on "Awful Coffee," and randomly inserts a rhythm changes bridge out of nowhere in the middle of the tune just for the hell of it. Quotes abound, and my personal favorite is a random interjection of the melody of "You Stepped Out of a Dream" in the middle of "Appearing Nightly At the Black Orchid," the 25-minute suite that makes up the heart of the record.

A killin' big band record, there should be more like it. Recommended.

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.