Best Jazz of 2019

Feb 1 2020

Best of 2019 #13: Minua – “Still Light”

 

Back in February when I originally recommended Still Light, I said it was waaaaaaay too soon to be making proclamations like This is the most beautiful thing I’ve heard all year.  Except, I was right.  It was and it is.  And now that a year has passed since I first opened my ears to this lovely recording, a year spent listening to this album over and over and over again, I’m now even more assured in my assessment that the Minua trio’s Still Light is one of the most gorgeous things I’ve heard this year, maybe the most gorgeous, and I expect my opinion will be shared by many others.  The trio of bass clarinetist Fabian Willmann and guitarists Luca Aaron and Kristinn Kristinsson treat the influences of Scandinavian folk, ambient minimalism, Nordic jazz, and a dash of post-rock melodicism as if merely fluctuations of shadows dancing between the rays of sunrise.  And this is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard all year.

Your album personnel:  Fabian Willmann (bass clarinet), Kristinn Kristinsson (guitar) and Luca Aaron (guitar).

Released on Traumton Records.

Music from Nantes, France.

I wrote about this album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Bandcamp – Amazon

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Feb 1 2020

Best of 2019 #14: James Brandon Lewis – “An Unruly Manifesto”

 

There’s a relentlessness to this music that is nothing less than thrilling.  But more than that, it’s got heart.  It’s evident in every note, and it bleeds on through no matter how volatile the music may get, and that’s why the unerring melodicism of this music is the quality that eclipses all others.  James Brandon Lewis has crafted a recording that, for all intents and purposes, has the character of protest, of standing up to everything that’s wrong… and, yet, it would take very little convincing were the tenor saxophonist to assert that love was the album’s inspiration, or a response to the spiritual.  It’s a rare thing to hear the tender pulse from music that rages with the fury of the world coming apart at the seams.  Lewis, along with trumpeter Jaimie Branch, bassist Luke Stewart, guitarist Anthony Pirog and drummer Warren Trae Crudup III, make it seem as natural as taking your next breath.

Your album personnel:  James Brandon Lewis (tenor sax), Jaimie Branch (trumpet), Luke Stewart (bass), Anthony Pirog (guitar), and Warren Trae Crudup III (drums).

Released on Relative Pitch Records.

Listen to more of the album on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Music from New York City.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Bandcamp – Amazon

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Feb 1 2020

Best of 2019 #15: Max Andrzejewski’s Hütte – “Hütte & Guests Play the Music of Robert Wyatt”

 

Summing up the music of Max Andrzejewski for The Bandcamp Daily, I lean into how the musician really just can’t seem to do anything normal.  He’s been responsible for the creative phenomena of his Hütte ensemble, which metamorphosizes from a melodically spasmodic quartet into a choir for a sonic celebration of food.  To say nothing of his dizzying transitions between free jazz to synth-rock to folk singer-songwriter projects.  And yet, despite expecting the unexpected from his domain, the drummer surprises yet again with an embrace of the Robert Wyatt songbook.  Max Andrzejewski’s Hütte ramps up the eccentricities of the Hutte ensemble (which hadn’t seemed possible before this recording), but more importantly, there’s an equal and crucial spike in the melodic ardor of the pieces.  This emphasis on melodic richness and depth is what allows the ensemble to get as crazy as they want with the material, because in the end, the melodic devotion will balance things out.  This is one of the wilder recordings of the year.  Really shouldn’t have expected anything different.

Your album personnel:  Max Andrzejewski (drums, vocals, arrangements), Johannes Schleiermacher (saxophone, flute, synth), Tobias Hoffmann (guitar), Andreas Lang (double bass), Cansu Tanrıkulu (vocals, fx), and Jörg Hochapfel (organs, guitars, vocals).

Released on the WhyPlayJazz label.

Music from Berlin, Germany.

I wrote about this album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Amazon – Bandcamp

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Jan 31 2020

Best of 2019 #16: Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah – “Ancestral Recall”

 

Writing about the 2019 release by Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah for The Bandcamp Daily, I explained that the source of the appeal is that the music “Is both forward-thinking and tethered to the past.  It is embraceable as a pop tune, yet it’s also a puzzle asking to be solved.”  And this ever-present dichotomy presented by the trumpeter has, with each subsequent recording, become increasingly concrete in the expression of these characteristics, even as the lines distinguishing between the two become increasingly opaque.  Adjuah’s music is a statement of what music was, what it is now, and what it yet still could be.  2019’s Ancestral Recall is the most crystallized vision of that statement to date.

Your album personnel:  Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (trumpet, Adjuah trumpet, siren, sirenette, reverse flugelhorn, percussion, synth percussion, SPDSX, Malletkat, MPC, keyboards, synth bass, Pan African kit, drums, vocals, Sonic Arcitexture) and guests:  Saul Williams (vocals), Elena Pinderhughes (flute), Logan Richardson (alto sax), Corey Fonville (drums, SPDSX, Pan African Kit), Lawrence Fields (piano), Kris Funn (bass), Devan Mayfield, Chris Turner, Mike Larry Draw (vocals), Weedie Braimah, Themba Mkhatshwa, Amadou Kouyate, Munir Zakee Richard (djembe, mande drums, dundunba, sangban, kenkeni, ewe drums, sogo, atsimevu, agboba, kidi, kaganu, tambourine, kalimba, bata, congas).

Released on Ropeadope Records.

Music from New Orleans, LA.

I wrote about this album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Amazon – Bandcamp

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Jan 31 2020

Best of 2019 #17: Camila Meza & the Nectar Orchestra – “Ámbar”

 

The surprising thing about Camila Meza and her new recording Ámbar is that this really shouldn’t be that surprising.  And yet, it is.  In fact, it’s stunning.  The vocalist-guitarist made a huge impression with her contributions to Ryan Keberle’s Azul Infinito and Fabian Almazan’s Alcanza, her voice shining like a sun at the center of all things.  And she was a light who illuminated every other musician on the recording as brightly as she herself, and made it inconsequential who belonged to the orbit of the other.  That ability to be at the center of things while equally and inextricably connected to every other element of the music is an enviable balance for a vocalist to strike.  Her own recording, the 2016 Traces on Sunnyside Records, further displayed Meza’s talent for an arresting delivery that makes one snap to attention while also conveying a soothing comfort.

But even here, Ámbar seems like a plateau achieved more audacious than anything reasonably anticipated for her next recording.  The strings arrangements of her Nectar Orchestra melt into the firm embrace of both jazz ensemble and Chilean folk, except during those passages where the strings say to hell with staying grounded in rhythmic patterns, let’s go soaring.  This is an album of many great proclamations and big statements, yet never seems far removed from a poignant melody and soft touch.  Inspired renditions of songs by Elliot Smith, Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays, Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes, and Milton Nascimento snap right into place with Meza originals, and come off sounding like they’d all been meant for this project on exactly this very day.  It’s one of the very best recordings of 2019, and, in the context of Meza’s recording career, it wholly decimates all measures of what could and should be expected next from her.

Your album personnel:  Camila Meza (vocal, acoustic & electric guitars); Eden Ladin (piano, juno, celesta, keyboards), Noam Wiesenberg (bass, arrangements), Keita Ogawa (drums, percussion), Tomoko Omura (violin), Fung Chern Hwei (violin), Benjamin von Gutzeit (viola), and Brian Sanders (cello).

The Self-Produced album was released on Sony Masterworks.

Music from New York City.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Amazon

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