Bird is the Worm Best of 2015: Albums 6-10

Today’s post reveals the 6th through the 10th Bird is the Worm Top 30 jazz albums of 2015.

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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. The equation of scarcity of time vs. the overflow of music always leaves a trail of victims in its wake. It’s also a matter of subjectivity. I do my best to make objectivity the guiding force of all my decisions, judging each album’s qualities without consideration for my own personal preferences… at least, as much as I am humanly able. I can say for certain, my Best of 2015 list has ended up much different than my personal Favorites of 2015 list. No attempt to encapsulate the 2015 jazz recordings landscape will be fully comprehensive, but I humbly offer up my list with a confidence that these albums represent the best that 2015 had to offer. But it’s a list that’s likely to gain some addenda with the passing of time. The process of discovery never truly ends.

As with any Best Of year, 2015 is more accurately represented by the date range of November 1st, 2014 to October 30th, 2015. This ain’t no damn pop music… there’s definitely love at first sight with these recordings, but for a Best Of list, there’s gotta be some time allowed, also, for assessing the times for acclimation, absorption and endurance of these recordings.

What you’ll read below are not reviews. They are simple one-take thoughts, reminiscences, fragments of recollections, and brief opinions about how each album struck me both now and when I first heard it or anything I just felt like noting about the album as I quickly typed up these tiny synopses. I’ve provided a link to a more formal write-up following each entry, and 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.

So, with all that out of the way…

Let’s begin.

6.  Tomoko Omura – Roots (Inner Circle Music)

What a very cool recording.  Violinist Tomoko Omura takes well-known Japanese songs, both traditional and those of a more recent vintage, and rearranges them for a modern jazz quintet.  That she’s taking well known songs from popular culture, it’s almost a given that each tune is going to come with it its own very catchy, very memorable melody cemented into place… and that Omura is able to seed her own renditions with these melodies and get them to bloom into something new and fantastic is a huge accomplishment.  It would be so easy for a musician to get bogged down by the baggage of the originals and produce just another covers album, but Omura deftly avoids that complication and serves up tunes that can be traced back to the originals in a side-by-side comparison, but avoided all hints of mimicry and formulaic by-the-numbers construction in these imaginative takes.  And not for nothing, Omura makes these tunes just as catchy as the originals even as her quintet takes those melodies into directions new and exciting and, perhaps, never envisioned by the original composers.  That quintet, by the way, is rounded out by guitarist Will Graefe, pianist Glenn Zaleski, bassist Noah Garabedian and drummer Colin Stranahan… all of them playing these tunes like they grew up with them.  Outstanding.

Read more on Bird is the Worm (LINK).

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7.  Greg Foat Group – The Dancers at the Edge of Time (Jazzman Records)

Oh good god, do I love it when a musician takes a big step up to a new plateau.  I’m not looking to get into any pissing contest with hardcore Greg Foat Group fans looking to debate that all of his previous recordings are fucking awesome and this one is just another in a line of top recordings.  His previous stuff is good.  His first studio album, I liked it well enough to give it a warm reception.  His first live performance recording I liked even better, thinking it showed more depth than that first studio recording, which sometimes seemed, at times, a little thin on substance.  But this, their newest, it shines brilliantly as any diamond plucked from the ground, as much as the sun.  Simultaneously a throw-back to 1970s psych-jazz and a look-forward to where spiritual jazz can go next, this excellent recording has a fullness of sound that can fill up the void of any empty heart and possesses a creative viewpoint as incisive and clear as the sharpest daydream you’ve ever had.  Thick dreamy melodies with gentle harmonies to wrap them in and catchy grooves to carry them peacefully away all mark this wonderful recording.  We’re getting into the territory of the Best Of list where it’s a very slight difference between the current slot and #1.  The Dancers at the Edge of Time is not, in my opinion, the Album of the Year… but you betcha it got some serious consideration.  It earned that consideration.

Read more on Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

8.  Eric Hofbauer Quintet – Prehistoric Jazz Vol.1:  The Rite of Spring (Creative Nation Music)

Considering the source material, or, perhaps, driven by it, Hofbauer’s take on Stravinski’s The Rite of Spring has a strange and curious personality.  Notes and phrases are dealt out like a street denizen working angles and schemes and dishing out rumors and inside info on a patch of neighborhood.  There’s a sense of in the know, and it’s a big reason that this unconventional music is so damn arresting and compels the ear to hang on to every word.  Hofbauer and crew didn’t go into this project attempting to recreate the original work or cruise it as some genre-melding experience, but instead took a more abstract approach, looking at certain key elements for inspiration and the personal connections forged between listener and composer as launching points for new, creative inspirations of their own.  The proof of this approach is bolstered by the number of shorter pieces on this recording, some that are merely fragments of ideas.  Of great significance are how these fragments help to shape the flow of the music overall, and how Hofbauer’s quintet is able to take challenging ideas and concepts and present them in a way that are easy to absorb and embrace.  But when it all shakes out, this strangely alluring music will provide no little intrigue whether you’re a classical music vet or a disinterested party just looking for something new and cool to pick up.  Joining Hofbauer and his guitar on this session is trumpeter Jerry Sabatini, clarinetist Todd Brunel, cellist Junko Fujiwara and Curt Newton on drums & percussion.

There’s a write-up of a couple Hofbauer albums scheduled for Jan. 2016.  In the meantime:

• Listen to (and, if you like it, purchase) The Rite of Spring at his Bandcamp page (LINK).
• Read about a very different Hofbauer recording written up earlier on Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

9.  Reijseger Fraanje Sylla – Count Till Zen (Winter & Winter)

Nobody comes even close to capturing the emotional power and resplendent tranquility of 1980s Codona than the trio of cellist Ernst Reijseger, pianist Harmen Fraanje and the stringed & percussion instruments (and occasional voice) of Mola Sylla.  A seamless blend of modern jazz and folk, the trio shifts between a lovely drifting ambiance and a determinedly focused intensity.  The conversational patter and seaside languor of the music makes it friendly as hell, and with the same level of craftsmanship of the Codona trio of Don Cherry, Collin Walcott and Nana Vasconcelos did back in the day, the Reijseger Fraanje Sylla trio slips in some well-placed catchy melodies to counterbalance their flirtations with blissful formlessness.  Their previous album Down Deep was no less powerful and ranked equally as high on that year’s Best Of list, and that they could follow it up with an album that possesses as forceful a punch and generous, amicable warmth is a testament to the trio’s creative symbiosis and all the proof anyone should need that they need to keep collaborating over and over and over.

Read more on Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

10:  Ghost Rhythms – Madeleine (Self-Produced)

I’m a sucker for a good theme.  The large ensemble Ghost Rhythms have made their own adaptation of the movie score to Vertigo, but told through the eyes of poor, troubled Madeleine.  The movie has a sprawling landscape of sound and imagery, well suited to the cinematic milieu as well as the flow of Vertigo the movie, itself.  Also, this large ensemble very much captures the spirit of many thrillers from the 50s and 60s, when orchestrated soundtracks were the thing and top-flight jazz musicians were the ones to voice them (see also Anatomy of a Murder to start).  Up-tempo pieces stick to the suspenseful plot, as do the catchy melodies.  That many of the harmonic washes are tinted with a touch of melancholy falls right in line with the theme’s Madeleine POV.  But the thing about a concept album theme… for it to be truly successful, it has to transcend its inspiration, and be accessible to those listeners who first encounter the recording completely unaware of the music’s inspiration.  Absolute foreknowledge and complete innocence need to be on equal footing the first time the play button is hit on that concept album, else one group is hobbled from truly enjoying the recording at first blush.  Thankfully, Ghost Rhythms shows no difficulty accomplishing that task, and there’s absolutely no reason for you to rush on over to IMDB for some research before hitting the play button on this thoroughly absorbing, eminently enthralling album.

Read more on Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

Tomorrow’s post reveals the 2015 Bird is the Worm #2–#5 albums of the year.

Check out the entire Best of 2015 List

Cheers.

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