Jazz album of the year -2015

[Serial_Apologist]

Ian ~ Jazz Journal has greatly improved with Mark Gilbert as editor and Brian Morton on board.
The current issue(January) has an interesting article by Simon Spillett on Tubby Hayes' recordings and also the Critics' poll.
In case anyone's interested here's JJ's top ten albums of 2015 with points awarded in brackets:

ERROLL GARNER - COMPLETE CONCERT BY THE SEA - COLUMBIA/LEGACY(74)
HORACE SILVER - BEST OF THE EARLY YEARS 1953-1960 - DOCUMENTS(65)
JAN LUNDGREN - A RETROSPECTIVE - FRESH SOUND(62)
ORNETTE COLEMAN - BEAUTY IS A RARE THING - RHINO/ATLANTIC(46)
GEORGE RUSSELL SEXTET/SEPTET - COMPLETE DECCA/RIVERSIDE 1960-1962 - FRESH SOUND(45)
HARRY ALLEN/JAN LUNDGREN - QUIETLY THERE - STUNT(41)
BILLIE HOLIDAY - LADY DAY - COLUMBIA/LEGACY(40)
AL COHN/JIMMY ROWLES - HEAVY LOVE - ELEMENTAL(40)
BILLIE HOLIDAY - COMPLETE COMMODORE - ESSENTIAL JAZZ CLASSICS(33)
MARIA SCHNEIDER - THE THOMPSON FIELDS - ARTIST SHARE(32)

Thanks for the up, JR. I must look out for a copy, though I can't think of where one would buy one today, without having to take out an entire years' "conscription".

[Jazzrook]

Thanks for the up, JR. I must look out for a copy, though I can't think of where one would buy one today, without having to take out an entire years' "conscription".

S_A After some enquiries, the current issue of Jazz Journal(January) with Critics' Poll 2015 can be obtained from:

Jazz Journal
The Invicta Press
Lower Queens Road
ASHFORD
KENT
TN24 8HH

JJ Admin Tel. No. 01233 648895
It costs £4.95
Cheque payable to JJ Publishing Ltd.

[Serial_Apologist]

S_A After some enquiries, the current issue of Jazz Journal(January) with Critics' Poll 2015 can be obtained from:

Jazz Journal
The Invicta Press
Lower Queens Road
ASHFORD
KENT
TN24 8HH

It costs £4.95
Cheque payable to JJ Publishing Ltd.

Most kind of you JR - many thanks.

[Quarky]

This is Ivan Hewett's (music critic of The Telegraph) top 50 choices - nothing if not comprehensive:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/what-to-listen-to/best-jazz-albums-of-2015/

[Ian Thumwood]

Hewett's choices seem pretty informed but it is interesting how these lists seems to be composed of records by "big hitters" like John Scofield, Dave Douglas and Brad Melhdau. There is almost a situation developing where long established players seem to have been around enough to have developed sufficient craftsmanship to produce records with far greater depth than some other contemporaries. As a consequence, you feel that their recordings will always make any "best of" list as they are so much better than their contemporaries. ie. A John Scofield album with Joe Lovano is truly an "event." The list also features a number of parochial efforts too and maybe there is a tendency to give more than a nod to European artists beyond what they are due. Personally, I find a lot of this European over-praised even if it does seem to be bridging the gap with their American counterparts. I don't think it is as good as a good proportion of the better, American efforts even if the Americans are capable of issuing disappointing records too. That said, it is good that the Irving Mayfield New Orleans Jazz Orchestra record with Dee Dee Bridgewater did not get overlooked as my Dad has this record and it is pretty amazing. Although the Telegraph list is pretty expansive, none of my favourite records seemed to have made the cut.

This week I have been listening to quite a few 2015 issues like the Christian Mc Bride trio "Live at the Village Vanguard, " John Fedchock big band and Peter Hand Big Band ( featuring a stellar line up including don Braden, Valerie Ponomarev , etc) none of which seemed to feature in any "best of " list. Granted that the selection of these lists are arbitrary, it is curious to think that there is a substantial "mainstream" body of jazz which it totally overlooked. The Fedchock disc is pretty interesting and the former Woody Herman MD is demonstrative that the post-Thad Jones / Mel Lewis style of writing still sounds hugely relevant. The ability of the big band format to endure is surely one of the great achievements in jazz and I think offers a more accurate assessment of where many jazz musicians themselves might pitch their own votes with the notion of the big band being some vehicle to restrict creativity and improvisation being wholly redundant. Writing for large ensembles has evolve in to an idiom where the possibilities can now been seen to be as great or even greater than in freer styles of jazz. Fedchock's writing doesn't seem either dated or too modish and I would imagine the quality of his writing will endure for years after the bulk of the names on the list have been forgotten about.

The other disc I have been listening to on the way back from football is by Tomeka Reid's quartet. Notwithstanding the fact that the cello should get the vote as the instrument which should be used more in jazz, the line up of guitarist Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Jason Roebke (bass) and Thomas Fujiwara (drums) in another New York / Chicago mixed line- up is another example of the kind of avant garde jazz which is harking back to the late 1960's as if to suggest that everything produced since then is an aberration. This disc featured in a number of American polls and it is impossible not to share the enthusiasm. If Billy Bang played cello, he would probably have sounded like Tomeka Reid. The curious thing for me is that so much of the jazz produced by the current generation of Chicago musicians can feature some wild soloing yet also adhere to a traditional feel of swing. A lot of this jazz does have the kind of drive that you would expect from a record by Count Basie, Art Blakey or Charlie Mingus and it is not unusual to hear the kind of grooves that are an anathema to many contemporary players who treat jazz in a more oblique manner. The Tomeka Reid record is a good case in point with Fujiwara almost providing a traditional swing accompaniment even if Halvorson and Reid sometimes scratch away in an atonal fashion with the former coaxing all sorts of de-tuned effects on her guitar rather like an intoxicated and unruly Philip Catherine. The music is a bizarre coupling of the extremes but it might serve as a salutary listening experience to someone like SA in that the free / improvised nature of Reid's music seems to look both backwards and forwards to the jazz tradition at the same time. Like the best of the AACM crew, Reid seems to understand and love earlier styles of jazz and doesn't consider them to be incompatible to her perspective. I would suggest that this record would get the thumbs up from Jazzrook but the "traditional" element of it is also one that I think would intrigue Bluesnik.

[Ian Thumwood]

Jazzrook

I think you are going have to check this disc out!! Here is a clip from a tune which does not feature albeit it isn't the more familiar tune which share the same name:-

[Ian Thumwood]

This track is actually even better and is taken from the eponymous Tomeka Reid quartet album. The slower pieces like this have a really nice clarity about them whereas the up-tempo stuff has that old-fashioned bouncy swing that used to make Billy Bang's music so enjoyable. :--