Bird is the Worm Best of 2014: Albums 2-5

Today’s post reveals the 2nd through the 5th Bird is the Worm Top 30 jazz albums of 2014.

*****

A Best Of album has to hit me right in my heart and provoke a strong emotional reaction.  A Best Of album has to engage my head and elicit a cerebral connection.  Give me some intrigue.  Show me your music has got personality.  Extra points are awarded for doing Something Different.  I want to hear music that embraces the best qualities of creativity.  Strong musicianship alone is not enough.  Many excellent albums fall short of earning a slot on the list.  It literally pains me when I see some of the albums that aren’t included on my Best Of lists.  But I listen to a lot of music, and one of the rare downsides to encountering so much great Jazz is that some of it won’t receive the recognition it deserves.  So there you have it.

No matter how diligent a listener is and no matter how thoroughly that person covers the music scene, there will always be albums that slip through the cracks.  It’s a matter of the scarcity of time vs. the overflow of music.  It’s also a matter of subjectivity.  I try to instill an objectivity into the affair, judging each album’s qualities without consideration for my own personal preferences… at least, as much as I am able.  I can say for certain, my Best of 2014 list looks different than my personal Favorites of 2014 list.  No attempt to encapsulate the 2014 jazz album landscape will be fully comprehensive, but I humbly offer up my list with a confidence that these albums represent the best that 2014 had to offer.  But it’s a list that’s likely to gain a few addendums with the passing of time.

What you’ll read below are not reviews.  They are simple thoughts, reminiscences, fragments of recollections, and brief opinions about how each album struck me both now and when I first heard it.  There is a link to a more formal write-up following each entry… that’s where you go to find out what’s what about each recording.  Those write-ups are accompanied with embedded audio of an album track, as well as personnel and label information, links to artist, label, and retail sites, and anything else that seemed relevant at the time I wrote about the album.  Follow those links.  They might just lead to your next most favorite album ever.

Beginning on January 25th, I will be revealing 5 albums a day, with the 2014 Album of the Year announcement occurring on December 31st.  The posts will appear on the site’s main page.  This list will get updated 24 hours after each post.

So, with all that out of the way:  Let’s begin…

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2.  Rob Mazurek & Black Cube SP – Return the Tides:  Ascension Suite & Holy Ghost

Recorded in the aftermath of the sudden passing of Rob Mazurek‘s mother, Return the Tides is creativity as the vehicle for the outpouring of pure emotion.  The music influences are many of the usual suspects from Mazurek’s diverse, eclectic background… there’s the updated Tropicalia, there’s the space-y trip-rock, there’s the post-bop, there’s the avant-garde, there’s the electronica, the jazz-rock fusion, there’s the waves of improvisation, one after the other… and, really, all of that is secondary to the influence of personal loss, exposing all the raw emotions as one strives to heal and move on.  It’s these interludes of intensity and transition that can lead to a place where little difference between art and artist exists.  It’s from those moments of unity that the most sincere and honest creativity is generated, and this album is exactly that from first note to last.  This album wears its heart on its sleeve.  This is as powerful as music gets.

Released on Cuneiform Records.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

3.  Rafael Karlen – The Sweetness of Things Half-Remembered

In recent years, there’s been a huge uptick of musicians uniting their classical training and their jazz experience into the same expression.  Rafael Karlen’s sublime 2014 release is one of the best examples of this trend at its best.  On this chamber jazz session, the saxophonist is joined by pianist Steve Newcomb and a string quartet for an album so lovely it exists in a state of perfection.  Striking imagery is framed in vignettes of harmonic warmth, susurrant rhythms and melodies of a heavenly elegance and grace.  The flights of improvisation are just as strong as the compositional foundations they spring from.  There’s an alluring languorous pace to this music… one that abides even when the ensemble summons up brief animated flurries.  About as beautiful as an album can get.

This Self-Produced album was released on Pinnacles Music.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

4.  John Ellis & Andy Bragen – MOBRO

Saxophonist John Ellis and playwright Andy Bragen take the anecdotal story of a trash barge and turn it into an epic story.  This exhilarating interpretation of the pop culture curiosity, MOBRO 4000 is adapted as the framework for a through-composed large ensemble work about environmentalism, isolationism and society.  Loaded with wind instruments, guitars and vocalists, this piece originally meant for live performance loses none of its wild expressiveness on the recorded medium.  So over-the-top theatrical at times that it’s transformed into massive serious dialog, not unlike how the comedy in satire reveals grave, hidden truths.  A great story behind a great album, just overflowing with personality.  Of all the albums on the Best of 2014 list, this is the one you want as your drinking buddy.  This is pure, unabashed creativity here, reflecting the kind of vision we want all our artists to adopt.

Released on Parade Light Records.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

5.  Diego Barber – Tales

An amazing duo collaboration between guitarist Diego Barber and pianist Craig Taborn.  Based on prior work, both musicians rate at the top of the class on their respective instruments, and this 2014 session only adds to their bona fides.  Barber continues to expand on his inventive approach with classical guitar in a jazz setting.  These four pieces are simultaneously meditative and excitable.  Long interludes develop sequentially from the foundation of strong melodies, taking paths so far away from the opening sounds that it’s stunning when the duo return to the nest from which those melodies sprung.  It’s the breathless creativity that carries long distances like a proud river from one melodic fragment to the next that signifies this album’s remarkable display of musicianship.  Just outstanding.

Released on Sunnyside Records.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

Worth noting that I’ll be publishing an overview of Barber’s entire catalog in January 2015, which will include a write-up of Tales.  So, stay in touch.

*****

Tomorrow’s post reveals the 2014 Bird is the Worm Album of the Year.

Cheers.