The best jazz albums of 2024 (so far)

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

All of these outstanding albums were Editor's Choices in Jazzwise magazine and are highly recommended. If you are searching for an inspirational new recording, look no further

In every issue of Jazzwise, Editor Mike Flynn chooses a selection of the most outstanding new releases as his Editor's Choice. Below, you will find all of the albums selected as Editor's Choice in 2024 – so far...

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Devin Daniels

LesGo!

Sam First Records

Devin Daniels (as), Julien Knowles (t), Chris Fishman (p), Jermaine Paul (b) and Benjamin Ring (d). Rec. 16-17 February 2024

Devin and his cohort met at UCLA’s Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance, and Mr Hands himself has personally mentored the young alto prodigy and taken him on tour. The title track of this, his second album, shows us why: Daniels simply explodes out of the gate with a flurry of creative phrases before the theme, a sort of Ornette-ish gospel chant, kicks in – then he’s away, his poky, acidic tone burning over a tricky dotted rhythm bassline. In a similar vein to the Immanuel Wilkins quartet, Daniels and his band operate at the forefront of the US acoustic jazz tradition - there are versions of Monk’s ‘Ugly Beauty’ and the evergreen ‘Scrapple From The Apple’, and the soloists’ language is rooted in bop and it’s more free-ranging successors, but the rhythm arrangements are furiously contemporary so that Coltrane’s ‘Spiral’ seesaws between straight swing and a breakneck Vijay Iyer inspired 11/8.

If that sounds intense, it definitely is. Tunes like ‘Reckon’ show a more contemplative side and indicate Daniels' potential as a composer, and while there’s still a flavour of the conservatoire about some of the studiedly knotty themes, the overt link with the powerful, edgy West Coast black avant-garde tradition of Horace Tapscott and Arthur Blythe imbues this music with palpable passion and commitment. Outstanding. Eddie Myer

Tord Gustavsen Trio

Seeing

ECM

Tord Gustavsen (p), Steinar Raknes (b) and Jarle Vespestad (d). Rec. October 2023

Like many ECM artists, Tord Gustavsen is known for working on the borders of jazz, folk and classical, along with a touch of tango and a soupçon of blues. As we were once informed by his fellow Norwegians, The Kings of Convenience, quiet is the new loud. And of course, for Tord Gustavsen, quiet is his default mode: he is the living embodiment of the ECM sound: slow, contemplative, solemn and full of space.

On this new album, the profound religious sensibility that was always lurking just beneath the surface of his music has now broken cover. Hence the first track is the traditional melody ‘Jesus gjør meg stille’ (‘Jesus make me quiet’). The religious theme continues with the original composition ‘The Old Church’, followed by two ancient hymn tunes adapted by Johann Sebastian Bach - the 16th century ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden’ (‘Christ lay in death’s bonds’) and ‘Auf meinen lieben Gott’ (literally ‘In my dear God’).

The trio’s previous outing (Opening, 2022) was notable for the inclusion for the first time of bassist Raknes, an alumnus of Chick Corea and Michael Brecker. And here he is again, though this time he’s all acoustic – no sign here of the electronica with which he made his instrument howl and squeal on that album.

Although Seeing is in no way a departure from Gustavsen’s signature style, it’s a mature work, with a more serene, settled feel to it than we have heard before. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that he seems to have found his perfect band: drummer Jarle Vespestad has been with him since the beginning of his career, but the bass slot was always fluid – until now. In Steinar Raknes he has found his perfect foil. The final track, ‘Seattle Song’ is perhaps the best example of this, with a simple melody and repeated bass line that were apparently improvised at a sound check in 2023. Peter Jones

Samara Joy

Portrait

Verve

Samara Joy (v), Jason Charos (t, flhn), Donavan Austin (tb), David Mason (as, fl), Kendric McCallister (ts), Conor Rohrer (p), Felix Moseholm (b) and Evan Sherman (d). Rec. February 2024

Recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio, this follow-up to Samara Joy’s Grammy-winning 2022 album Linger Awhile sees the vocalist, songwriter, arranger and bandleader reach ever greater heights of artistic expression, accompanied by her road-tested band.

With one of the most daring harmonic journeys in the Great American Songbook, Joy weaves through the shifting tonalities of the restless ‘You Stepped Out Of A Dream’ with complete command of the melodic line. The Mingus tribute to Charlie Parker, ‘Reincarnation Of A Lovebird’, is an absolute tour de force – featuring Joy’s own lyrics; a remarkable, free-time a cappella opening section is followed by a subtle transition to a mid-tempo swing which is brilliantly done.

There’s a gorgeous version of the standard ‘Autumn Nocturne’ in which the singer’s lustrous timbre caresses the lyrics. The splicing together of ‘Peace of Mind/Dreams Come True’, the first co-written by Joy and tenor saxist Kendric McCallister, the second a song from Sun Ra’s felicitously titled album Sound of Joy, is one of the most transcendent vocal performances I’ve heard this year.

Composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes, and with English lyrics by Jon Hendricks, Joy and her band give a joyously virtuosic take on one of the greatest songs in the bossa canon, ‘No More Blues’. On the poignant ‘Now And Then (In Remembrance Of…)’, she appends bittersweet lyrics to a tune written by her late mentor, Barry Harris, which the piano maestro recorded on his 1975 album, Vicissitudes. (“We will sing your song though it’s not the same/Will a spark like yours ever burn again?”). A dazzling take on ‘Day By Day’ rounds off this astonishingly good collection. Peter Quinn

Fernando Huergo Big Band

Relentless

Whaling City Sound

Fernando Huergo (b, el b, comp, arr), Jeff Classen, Billy Buss, Dan Rosenthal, Greg Hopkins (t), Randy Pingrey, Chris Gagne, Jason Camelio (tb), Andy Garcia (btb), Rick Stone, Allan Chase (as), Rick DiMuzio, Joel Springer (ts), Daniel Ian Smith (bs), Santiago Bosch (p), Gen Yoshimura (d) and Ernesto Diaz (cga). Rec. 4-5 November 2023

No, I hadn’t heard of composer/bassist Huergo before, although he has a 60-session discography, according to Tom Lord’s Jazz Discography. Again, though, those recordings were largely concerned with artists based in Massachusetts, the home state for the Whaling City Sound label. Unknown or not, this is a hugely accomplished big band, brim-full of confidence and handling some demanding charts (all by Huergo, bar ‘Deluge’ by Wayne Shorter) with considerable verve, the soloists similarly forceful and happy to play at length.

Huergo says the arts exist "to elevate our spirits" as a kind of counterbalance to "the relentless absurdity in our daily reality" and who’s to say he’s wrong? That said, it’s his ‘Consciousness of Reality’ which opens, the ensemble flute-led, the piece developing over a series of punchy brass-bound passages much as Maria Schneider’s do, Huergo on electric bass, with vibrant solos by Buss and DiMuzio (all soloists are identified, thankfully). ‘Ornette’ is dedicated to the sax giant, electric bass to the fore again over rock-patterned drums, the ensemble shouts also flute-led, an array of soloists playing chase. ‘Vidalita’ is carried by flutist Musayelyan, the writing quite solemn, and simply lovely.

With 11 pieces to consider, it’s perhaps pertinent to pick out ‘The Illusion of Hope’, dedicated to the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, the writing elegiac and richly hued, altoist Chase featured. I liked the oddly intricate finisher, ‘Groove Odds’ too. The blurb says the album is a ‘testament to resilience, hope, and the enduring power of music’. Sounds about right to me. Superb music throughout. Peter Vacher

Claire Martin

Almost In Your Arms

Stunt Records

Claire Martin (v), James McMillan (t, flhn, ky), Karl-Martin Almqvist (ts), Mark Jaimes (g), Martin Sjöstedt (p, ky), Niklas Fernqvist (b), Daniel Fredriksson (d, perc), Nikki Iles (acc), Joe Locke (vb) and Charlie Wood (v). Rec. January-February 2024

Almost In Your Arms sees Martin reuniting with the all-Swedish trio featured on her superb 2019 album, Believin’ It, augmented here by a number of exceptional guests. Written by the trio of Dorothy Fields, George Oppenheimer and Jimmy McHugh for the 1935 film Every Night At Eight, the album gets off to an explosive start with the energising blast of ‘I Feel A Song Coming On’, which sees Locke peeling off a dazzling solo. Charlie Wood joins Martin for a sublime cover of Tom Waits’ ‘This One’s From The Heart’, while Martin’s spectacularly deep pocket is heard to great effect on the title track, an arrangement featuring the piano trio only which is definitely more Nancy Wilson than Sophia Loren.

The delicious McMillan-Martin co-write ‘Apparently, I’m Fine’ sounds as if it could have been excerpted from a lost neo-noir directed by Roman Polanski.

Other highlights include a joyous take on Carole King’s ‘Bitter With the Sweet’, a fine brace of Mark Winkler songs – the uber atmospheric ‘Train In the Desert’ in which Locke doubles as narrator and soloist, and the pleasingly bittersweet ‘Do You Ever Wonder?’ – plus one of the most extraordinarily beautiful covers you’ll hear this or any other year, the Bacharach/Costello masterpiece ‘This House Is Empty Now’. Elsewhere, Martin’s incredibly rich timbre lights up the exquisite jazz waltz ‘September Song’, co-written by McMillan and the noted lyricist, Don Black. Produced, recorded and mixed by McMillan, who also contributes trumpet, flugel, keys and programming, the incredible clarity and spaciousness of the recorded sound captures Martin’s vocals to perfection. Peter Quinn

Michael Mayo

Fly

Artistry Music

Michael Mayo (v, g, perc), Shai Maestro (p, ky), Scott Mayo (v, as, ss), Linda May Han Oh (b, el b), Nate Smith (d, perc), and Valerie Pinkston (v). Rec. January 2024

Mayo’s debut album, Bones, was a work of startling originality with a sound world which referenced everything from The Beach Boys to J Dilla. Recorded over two days at Bunker Studio in Brooklyn and backed by an incredible all-star band, this eagerly awaited follow-up presents another wildly enjoyable sonic ride. Mayo-penned originals including album opener ‘Bag of Bones’, the title track (which again features his parents on backing vocal duties), and ‘Frenzy’ highlight his amazing facility for delivering hooks which lodge immediately in your consciousness.

There’s a delicious mid-tempo reworking of ‘Just Friends’ which calls to mind a version recorded by the great Andy Bey on his 2001 album Tuesdays In Chinatown. This song also features one of Mayo’s signature moves, namely a coda with stacked up vocal harmonies which pops up out of nowhere. Another Mayo original, ‘Silence’, epitomises all of the great qualities of his writing: a multipartite structure which keeps you guessing until the end, a pleasing metrical ambiguity, tiny textural details which delight the ear, plus vocal harmonies which take surprising harmonic turns. Mayo’s a cappella version of the Rodgers and Hart standard ‘I Didn’t Know What Time It Was’ is just under two and a half minutes of complete gorgeousness, with yet another of those heart-melting codas.

As well as impressive takes on ‘Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most’ and ‘Four’, Mayo’s energising account of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Speak No Evil’ features another metrical sleight of hand when its supercharged fusion tempo suddenly morphs into a half-time hip-hop feel. Peter Quinn

The Necks

Bleed

Northern Spy

Chris Abrams (ky), Lloyd Swanton (b) and Tony Buck (d, perc). Rec. date not stated

What can I say? What is there to say? It’s The Necks. You’ll either get it – and like it – or you won’t. If you do get The Necks, you’ll love this album (comprising just one track, a 42-minute improvisation), which is somehow both exactly the same as every other Necks album, and what you'd expect from this singular Australian trio; but at the same time it's also completely different from everything else they've ever done. And that's the appeal of The Necks, right there; as the late John Peel used to say of his favourite band, The Fall: "They are always different, they are always the same".

So what of Bleed? As with all Necks albums, it begins quietly, even tentatively, as if from nothing. The blank slate here is a delicate yet assertive piano figure, which builds not just in volume but also in textural complexity. You are taken on a journey into the unknown, but as always with this outfit, it's a trip of discovery and surprise, and into beauty, rather than a cause for dread (or a dead end).

As ever, the trio are rather opaque about who's doing what, and where, but it sounds as if there are electronics and an electric guitar in here somewhere as well as the customary piano, bass and drums. It's difficult to tell; but, it doesn't really matter. It's the scenery, what you discover on your journey, and who you meet, rather than the destination or mode of transport that's important. Bleed is immersive and – inaurguably – gorgeous and thus truly compelling. Kevin Whitlock

Aaron Parks

Little Big III

Blue Note

Aaron Parks (p), Greg Tuohey (g), David Ginyard Jr (b) and Jongkuk Kim (d). Rec. date not stated

You have to go all the way back to 2008 for the last time pianist Aaron Parks released an album on Blue Note; that was his outstanding debut Invisible Cinema which was the inspiration for his band Little Big. Now back on the label’s books, the 40-year-old pianist-composer continues his lyrical exploration of contemporary song-form on Little Big III on originals that draw from Americana-inflected alt. rock rather than your Irving Berlins or Wayne Shorters.

The interpretations take on the characteristic of the source material, largely but not exclusively in a dreamily atmospheric and warmly melancholic kind of mood. In a sense it touches on the work in this area of Keith Jarrett, Brad Mehldau and Bill Frisell, but Parks creates his own hauntingly atmospheric signature. In spite of Parks’ central influences, this is no watered down pop-orientated jazz. Greg Tuohey’s guitar chimes with Americana on the languorous ‘Locked Down’ that’s crying out for a Tom Waits vocal.

Right out of the blue comes ‘Sports’ with its uplifting Weather Report-ish African-tinged funk bass with Parks’ cohesive story-telling soloing prowess and Tuohey’s more surging jazz-rock guitar. The Steely Dan-ish ‘Little Beginnings’, the stimulating contrast between chiming indie guitar and feverish drum and bass-type kitwork on the perfectly titled ‘The Machines Say No’, the rock guitar psychedelia of ‘Willamania’ and the touching Jarrett-influenced ballad ‘Ashé’ are further indication of the pianist-composer’s highly impressive return to the legendary label’s catalogue. Selwyn Harris

Thom Rotella

Side Hustle

HighNote

Thom Rotella (g), Bobby Floyd, Greg Karukas (org), Roy McCurdy, Kendall Kaye (d) and Lenny Castro (perc). Guests: Eric Alexander (ts) and Jeremy Pelt (t). Rec. 20-21 and 27 February 2024.

US guitarist and composer Rotella, now 73, rarely ventures into jazz, having been immersed very fruitfully in the Hollywood studios for the past half-century. His credits cover the great names of popular music, Sinatra among them, TV sessions and soundtracks, jingles galore – but happily for us, HighNote has him paying tribute to the jazz organ trios of the 1960s and what a cracking job he and his pals make of it.

Bobby Floyd, an ex-Ray Charles sideman who once opened for the great man, knows exactly how to navigate these funky themes. Think Grant Green and organist Brother Jack McDuff and you’ll know what they’re collectively about. Add in the sheer rhythmic zest engendered by veteran drummer McCurdy and this is quite a package.

Rotella’s ‘Who Dat?’ is just right: a neat guitar riff with stop-time chords, before the solos, Floyd cooking in abundance. The title track has Alexander handling the twists and turns of the tune, with admirable aplomb, his solo typically direct, Rotella’s clear lines a further asset. Pelt comes in on Marvin Gaye’s ‘Don’t Mess With Mr T’, a quiet groover, with the trumpeter muted, Rotella underpinned by Floyd’s cushioning chords, percussion added. Classy. ‘Roy’s Groove’ is a standout: a chunky riff, McCurdy triumphant, swinging hard, Floyd flowing, Rotella bearing down.

Tadd Dameron’s lovely ‘On A Misty Night’ is, Rotella says, his take on the George Shearing sound, with strings and keys locked together in fetching style. Pelt returns for ‘Three Views of a Secret/Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, drummer and organist changed, the effect quite ethereal, echo added: atypical of the album as a whole. A certainty for my year-end Top 10. Peter Vacher

Alan Barnes & David Newton

‘Tis Autumn

Woodville

Alan Barnes (as, ts, bar s, cl, bcl), David Newton (p). Rec. 5 November 2023

I make this the fifth duo album from these two. Their first, Like Minds, appeared back in 1993 on the Fret label (with a booklet note by your correspondent), followed by Summertime on Concord in 2000. Now comes this elegiac, reflective collaboration, their third on Barnes’ own Woodville imprint, these pared-down performances representing just one aspect of their ongoing musical friendship which began at Leeds College in 1977.

Where many of their joint activities concentrate on the realisation of complex compositions or full-on bebop interpretations, the overall mood here is one of unhurried secular interplay, nothing fevered or overly clever, the tempos modest, Barnes concentrating on thoughtful expositions of these varied pieces, his clarinet on the opening Jobim composition measured and deeply felt, the fireworks dampened down. Momentarily, one is reminded of those classic Ruby Braff/Ellis Larkins duets, both in the overall grace of the playing as well as in the trust the two men place in each other, their various musical prompts slipped in without artifice.

Take Newton’s gorgeous re-harmonising of ‘You’re My Thrill', his piano understated but sinewy, or Barnes’ clarinet on ‘London By Night’, pure-toned and solemn. Bernstein’s ‘Lucky To Be Me’ has him in classic tenor ballad mode, agile and beguiling, while it’s his sonorous bass-clarinet on Henry Nemo’s title track, the exposition calmly stated, Newton picking up the rhythm. Ellington’s beautiful ‘Tonight I Shall Sleep With A Smile On My Face’ features Temperley-like baritone, the album closing with ‘A Bientôt’ by Peanuts Hucko, its twilight feel enhanced by Barnes’s bass-clarinet. So, nine themes, none hackneyed, Barnes sure-footed on all five horns, Newton as ever the perfect companion. Still like-minded? For sure. Peter Vacher

Emmet Cohen

Vibe Provider

Mack Avenue

Emmet Cohen (p), Bruce Harris (t), Frank Lacy (tb), Tivon Pennicott (ts), Philip Norris (b), Kyle Poole, Joe Farnsworth (d) and Cecily Petrarca (koshkah). Rec. 2024

During lockdown, Emmet Cohen established one of the world’s most regularly watched online jazz shows, with the encouragement of ‘vibe provider’ Michael Funmi Ononaiye, the producer and A&R man, one-time programmer at New York’s Dizzy’s Club. Funmi died in January 2024, so this album is a tribute, but it’s also a fine collection of tracks by Cohen’s trio, as well as three pieces for larger forces.

Both elements of the record work well, with the octet arrangements being both neat and exciting. On the title track there’s some fine playing from Pennicott, and Cohen’s following solo neatly picks up some of the lines from the tenor choruses.

But the trio tracks are what make the album, and whereas I have been critical of some ‘historical’ aspects of Cohen’s earlier work, there are no such scruples here: this is a mature, beautifully-balanced small group. The leap into a headlong tempo on ‘If This Isn’t Love’ is brilliantly handled, while the opening ‘Lion Song’ combines a slightly wistful quality with underlying strength. Similarly ‘Time on My Hands’ runs through some interesting ideas in the set-up until it settles into a fulfilling, elegant mid-tempo performance.

The record winds up with the larger band back for a blues, with some natty opening riffs leading into Harris on fine solo form, and Lacy following on, maybe displaying less extrovert form than he sometimes does, but leading well into the tenor and piano choruses, before some stimulating exchanges with Farnsworth’s drums. Overall a polished and rewarding album, that looks back at the tradition through contemporary eyes. Alyn Shipton

Nubya Garcia

Odyssey

Concord Jazz

Nubya Garcia (ts) plus various personnel including Joe Armon-Jones (ky), Daniel Casimir (b), Sam Jones (d), plus strings. Rec. date not stated

This new album from the multi-award-winning tenorist, bandleader and composer, Nubya Garcia, which follows her 2020 release on Concord Jazz, Source, represents an inspiring sonic leap forward. As well as pulsating modal workouts (‘The Seer’), there’s real melodic beauty, too, from ‘Set It Free’ (featuring London-based vocalist and trombonist Richie Seivwright) and ‘We Walk In Gold’ (featuring US vocalist, producer, and songwriter Georgia Anne Muldrow) to the ethereal beauty of the instrumental ‘Clarity’. Garcia also reveals some lovely arranging touches – the way in which the Chineke! strings and guest vocalist esperanza spalding introduce album opener ‘Dawn’ in free time, while the core trio of Joe Armon-Jones, Daniel Casimir and Sam Jones slowly introduce pulse in a gradual fade in; the dramatic strings only coda appended to the epic title track; the fabulously rich string pizzicati which drive ‘Water’s Path’ ever onwards; plus strings and sax ascending together in the all-too-brief ‘Clarity (Outerlude)’. Peter Quinn

Lux Quartet

Tomorrowland

Enja/Yellowbird

Myra Melford (p), Dayna Stephens (saxes), Scott Colley (b) and Allison Miller (d). Rec. date not stated

Myra Melford and Allison Miller have a history together. Melford may seem to have the more heavyweight avant-garde credentials – study with Jaki Byard and Don Pullen, recording with Henry Threadgill, Leroy Jenkins, Marty Ehrlich and Hans Bennink, and a mantelpiece-full of honours, awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim – while Miller’s discography includes the more accessible likes of Natalie Merchant and Brandi Carlisle.

But their series of recordings together under various guises shows that they are supremely compatible musicians, both equally able to command the space between tightly plotted complexity and gestural freedom, with Melford’s awesome chops alternately grounded and lifted aloft by Miller’s superbly inventive drumming. Lux Quartet is their first jointly-led project (Melford has contributed to several iterations of Miller’s highly rated Boom Tic Boom band) and they’ve called in another pair of simpatico freebop-friendly heavyweights to complete the classic horn-plus-rhythm quartet format.

Proceedings commence straight in the deep end with the intricate odd-metre atonality of ‘Intricate Drift’ allowing the band to display their complete command of the contemporary idiom: ’23 Januarys’ underpins the same atonality with a woozy swing feel reminiscent of early 1970s Braxton; and the aptly-named ‘The Wayward Line’ is a powerfully committed exercise in total freedom. But the leaders are just as likely to head in the opposite direction, so that ‘Congratulations And Condolences’ gives us a slice of uptempo minor-modal swing; ’Speak Eddie’ supplies a quirkily swaggering backing to Melford’s most Geri Allenesque solo; and the title track is a hushed, contemplative ballad that builds to a dramatic climax. Stephens’ tone on both alto and soprano is at once sharp and full-bodied, Colley is simply a monster, and the two leaders sound utterly committed throughout. High level music making. Eddie Myer

Milton Nascimento & esperanza spalding

Milton + esperanza

Concord Records

Milton Nascimento (v), esperanza spalding (v, b), plus various personnel incl Matthew Stevens (g), Leo Genovese, Corey D King (ky), Justin Tyson (ky, d, v) and Eric Doob (d, perc). Rec. 2023

Sumptuous arrangements, sparkling duets, an alluringly structured song list, with playing and singing that immediately takes up residence in your heart, Milton + esperanza is an unforgettable, life-affirming album and a loving paean to musical communion.

Produced and arranged by spalding, the album presents 16 tracks that bridge generations and musical worlds. Five classic Nascimento songs include the transporting ‘Outubro’ and the utterly gorgeous ‘Morro Velho’, both excerpted from his 1969 album Courage, while Nascimento’s consummate 1972 double album recorded with Lô Borges, Clube Da Esquina, is represented by the affecting ‘Cais’. spalding originals including the effervescent ‘Wings for the Thought Bird’ featuring flautist Elena Pinderhughes and the superb Orquestra Ouro Preto, the aphoristic ‘Late September’ (“It is time/This is the way”) featuring Shabaka Hutchings on sax, plus the supremely catchy ‘Get It By Now’ showcase her evolving artistry.

We’re also treated to inspired interpretations of The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’ and Michael Jackson’s ‘Earth Song’, the latter performed by the mighty Dianne Reeves. Alongside spalding’s core US band plus Brazilian musicians including percussionists Kainã Do Jêje and Ronaldinho Silva, and guitarist Lula Galvão, the album’s impressive roster of guests also includes Paul Simon, Lianne La Havas, Maria Gadú, Tim Bernardes and Guinga.

A musical collaboration which began more than a decade ago with the Brazilian legend guesting on spalding’s 2010 album Chamber Music Society, this remarkable, full-length work concludes with Wayne Shorter’s ‘When You Dream’, featuring Wayne's widow Carolina Shorter, which pays moving tribute to spalding’s late mentor and collaborator. Peter Quinn

Nala Sinephro

Endlessness

Warp Records

Nala Sinephro (hp, syn, p), James Mollison (ts), Morgan Simpson (d), Sheila Maurice-Grey (t, flhn), Nubya Garcia (ts), Lyle Barton (syn), Natcyet Wakili (d), Dwayne Kilvington (syn b) and Orchestrate (strings)

In 2018, Nala Sinephro set the music world alight with her debut studio album, Space 1.8. It featured a cast of London’s top jazz musicians, including Nubya Garcia, Shirley Tetteh, and Jake Long, but was a complete aesthetic departure from the music so far released by these collaborators.

Her new album, Endlessness, inhabits a similar realm to Space 1.8, deftly balancing the open space and timelessness of ambient music with the ecstatic quality of jazz. All 10 tracks, each titled ‘Continuum’ followed by a number, are threaded together by a continuous yet varying arpeggiated synth pattern, which evokes a feeling of blossoming or unfolding. Sinephro is a master of the build-up; serene moments, awash with harp cadenzas, gradually evolve into ambient chaos, as frenetic, Terry Riley-esque synth patterns spin above low, slow bass notes.

She’s also a master of contrasts.

Part-way through ‘Continuum 2’, a euphoric string passage emerges from a well-steeped ambient blend of electronics, saxophone, piano and drums, a sudden window of clarity and coherence. Disparate, floating sounds are suddenly pulled into one, given meaning, and sent euphorically upwards. Gail Tasker

Melinda Sullivan/Larry Goldings

Big Foot

Colorfield

Larry Goldings (p, ky), Melinda Sullivan, Steve Gadd (foot drums), Sam Gendel (ts) CJ Camerieri (t), Daphne Chen (vn) and Karl McComas-Reichl (el b). Rec. 2023

Take the title literally. Big Foot is an album of big ideas made by the foot, and other things. Tap dancer Melinda Sullivan provides rhythms through steps that are so ingeniously miked by Pete Min that the uninformed ear would think a drum kit of sorts was deployed. The metallic clicking associated with the tradition of ‘hoofers’ is thus replaced by a wide range of percussive timbres that lends to the music a fresh electro-crunch character. With keyboardist Larry Goldings’ in vague Zawinul mode the songs evoke the more Afro-polyphonic strains of 1970s fusion while the ballads drift into strange blends of 1980s ambient noise and Tortoise-shaped 1990s post-rock.

In fact, the album really comes alive when the players frame a hefty funk backbeat with cartoonish bleeps and bassy belches that uphold a long tradition of instrumental black music predicated on high jinks as well as high skills. Even when session master drummer Steve Gadd is brought into the fold he creates a groove by stomping his soles on a cardboard box. There is absolutely no gimmickry at play though, as the delicious closer ‘Dyad’, with its whizzing, reverberating rhythm and glassy echoes, shows.

Inventive, wittily unorthodox work that takes us to the future from way back in time. Kevin Le Gendre

Alice Zawadzki/Fred Thomas/Misha Mullov-Abbado

Za Górami

ECM

Alice Zawadzki (v, vn), Fred Thomas (p, vielle, d) and Misha Mullov-Abbado (b). Rec. June 2023

This recording by the vocal chamber trio of singer-violinist Zawadzki, double bassist Mullov-Abbado and multi-instrumentalist Thomas is a meeting of like-minded artistic spirits. Originally formed in 2017, this is their first recording together as a trio and while their previous projects as individuals have tended to hop around stylistically, their diverse specialisations are what they have musically in common.

The ensemble sound is extremely focussed, as the trio have delicately carved out their own identity over the last couple of years and it proves a perfect fit for ECM. It’s a delicately free-flowing, spacious, still-of-the-night affair with a sensitive less-is-more approach to ensemble dialogue.

This collection of poetic folk song material showcases the London-born Zawadzki’s excellent grasp of French, Polish, English, Latino-Spanish and Jewish Ladino in song, the latter making up half the repertoire. Her phrasing is sophisticated yet instinctive and she injects drama, playfulness and tenderness into the songs with an acute awareness of meaning as well as the sound and silence around her.

Standouts include the opening Ladino traditional 'Dezile a Mi Amor' which starts with medieval Vielle string drone, turns into a village-dance with an otherwise barely-used drum, before Mullov-Abbado’s succinct jazz bass solo; ‘Gentle Lady’ with its original melody written by Thomas, inspired he says, “by Gregorian Chant, the silent sound of resonant spaces, harmonically static but very free, with multiple time dimensions at play.” Set to a short verse by author James Joyce, it offers a profound message about lost love and mortality, while the iconic Venezuelan songwriter Simon Diaz’ pastoral ‘Tonada de Lune Llena’ tells of a man’s humorous wrestle with nature. An exquisite recording that penetrates a little deeper with every listen. Selwyn Harris

Miguel Zenón

Golden City

Miel Music/Bandcamp

Miguel Zenón (as), Miles Okazaki (g), Matt Mitchell (p), Chris Tordini (b), Dan Weiss (d), Daniel Diaz (cga), Alan Ferber (tb), Diego Urcola (t) and Jacob Garchik (tb). Rec. 27-28 November 2023

Golden City is the much-lauded Puerto Rican saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón’s 16th album in just a quarter-century as a leader, and - like his last recording, 2022's Música de Las Américas - it’s a carefully researched yet freewheelingly musical rumination on the cultural and political evolution of iconic locations.

Zenón’s theme this time is San Francisco, a city he got to know well through his years with the San Francisco Jazz Collective. His own sax virtuosity and a powerful nonet (including pianist Matt Mitchell, guitarist Miles Okazaki and drummer Dan Weiss) keep this fast-moving cinematic venture bubbling.

Zenón’s beautiful alto sound opens the set alone, before a steady three-note hook, soon swept up by entwining piano and brass lines and light-footed trombone and piano solos, arrives at an astonishing stop-time passage of fast boppish horn counterpoint and then a conga-punctuated Latin groove that make you want to jump up and cheer. ‘Rush’ opens with a processional pulse that becomes an airy ensemble dance and then a hustling finale mirroring the 1848 Gold Rush’s ecstatic bedlam, and ‘Act of Exclusion’ touches on the US’ first anti-immigration legislation in 1882 (exclusion of new Chinese arrivals) as a tension between tonality and atonality, with Zenón’s dazzling alto fluency, Miles Okazaki’s brittle guitar lines, and Weiss’s drums driving it.

‘Displacement and Erasure’ (San Francisco’s later gentrification) unfolds as plaintive solos over jolting rhythms; ‘Wave of Change’ is a haunting and eventually thunderous Mingus-like march; ‘Cultural Corridor’ is a dizzying bop-like skim through a racing Puerto Rican plena rhythm.

Golden City is a startlingly imaginative set, and sometimes a breathtaking one that might well make it a standout jazz album for 2024. John Fordham

Lakecia Benjamin

Phoenix Reimagined (Live)

Ropeadope

Lakecia Benjamin (as), Zaccai Curtis (p), Elias Bailey (b), EJ Strickland (d) with guests John Scofield, Kat Dyson (el g), Randy Brecker (t), Jeff 'Tain' Watts (d), Richie Goods (b), Ray Angry (p) and Melodie Ray (v). Rec. date not stated

I’ve always enjoyed Lakecia Benjamin’s studio recordings (2020’s remarkable Pursuance especially), but for me it’s in the live setting where she really shines, be it at a big festival or the more intimate spaces of Ronnie Scott's or the Jazz Café. So the idea of recording the maestra live in the studio (at New York’s Bunker, a superb space of which Brad Mehldau is an alumnus), in front of a small but enthusiastic audience and with a bunch of top-notch accompanists and stellar guests, was a brilliantly simple one.

Phoenix Reimagined (Live) doesn’t disappoint. Despite a slight Spinal Tap cringe factor when Benjamin bellows "How ya feelin'?" in the introduction, this is jazz of the highest order, played with energy, intensity and commitment – and beautifully recorded, delivering both the spontaneity and atmosphere of a live show with the crisp precision of a great studio session. Focussing on music from last year's acclaimed Phoenix album and adding three new tunes, Reimagined features Benjamin's core backing trio and astutely-selected guest turns from the likes of John Scofield, Jeff 'Tain' Watts and Randy Brecker (and everyone is precisely on point).

What's especially striking about this album is its muscularity: not just musically, but also in the trenchant comment of 'Amerikkan Skin' additionally the new 'Peace Is Possible'; and a fabulous 'My Favorite Things' and and her explosive original 'Trane' prove that Benjamin is more than capable of carrying the torch of her great hero, John Coltrane.

Phoenix Reimagined is one of the best live jazz albums of recent years. It's the next best thing to being there. Kevin Whitlock

Daniel Casimir

Balance

Jazz re:freshed/Bandcamp

Daniel Casimir (el b, b), James Beckwith (p), Jamie Murray (d), James Copus, Jay Phelps, Shelia Maurice-Grey and Andy Davis (t), Kevin McLeod, Rosie Turton, Joe Bristow and Tom Dunnet (tb), Chris Maddock, Cassie Kinoshi, Binker Golding and Nubya Garcia (s), Ria Moran and Zola Marcelle (v) plus the London Contemporary Orchestra and Uéle Lamore (cond). Rec. November 2022

Bassist Daniel Casimir has been omnipresent across many of the current generation of jazz stars’ projects – namely playing countless tours with the likes of Nubya Garcia, Binker Golding and Cassie Kinoshi – always demonstrating supportive versatility but with a strength of tone and character that frequently uplifts a concert or recording. And while he’s already won praise for 2021’s Boxed In, little can prepare you for the power and scope of the wall of Technicolour sound that bursts forth from the minute the opening riffs of Balance jump out the speakers.

Casimir’s aforementioned former bosses swell the ranks here of this A-list powerhouse cast of some of London’s leading lights, to which the London Contemporary Orchestra adds lustrous layers of strings to futher extend the harmonic range of Casimir’s chordal palette. While some large ensemble projects can lack groove or feel like the strings are a bit of an afterthought, the key to Balance’s success is the deep integration of both brass and orchestra, which the bassist cleverly uses to bring together traditional big band sounds with rhythm section heft and lush cinematic epicness.

Blasting off with the ever-rising riffs of ‘Music Not Numbers’ – an angry repost to today’s ‘Spotify-ed’ numbers-obsessed music industry – it’s the following title track’s half-time feel that allows drummer Jamie Murray to hammer out some feisty drum’n’bass beats behind an unravelling James Beckwith piano solo. Then strings and brass dance around each other in a swirling crescendo – it’s compelling, powerful stuff. The addition of vocals, particularly on the emotive ‘I’ll Take My Chances’ with the husky soul voice of Ria Moran given space to breathe, before a searching Binker Golding solo, further demonstrates the ensemble’s canny ability to shapeshift with poise and sophistication.

Balancing accessibility, artfulness and ambition is no mean feat, but Daniel Casimir has done it here on one of the year’s most forward looking and stylistically thrilling albums. Mike Flynn

Wayne Escoffery

Alone

Smoke Session Records

Wayne Escoffery (ts), Gerald Clayton (p), Ron Carter (b) and Carl Allen (d). Rec. date not stated

The 49-year-old Jackie McLean-mentored tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery has high-pedigree recordings and live work under his belt, including lengthy stints with the veteran trumpeter Tom Harrell and Mingus Big Band. Escoffery was born in London, but moved to East Coast America when only 11 years old, and since 2001 has recorded his own albums as leader in the modernist mainstream vein.

He is a deceptively inventive horn man of depth and intensity despite the genial, unhurried surface sound of his playing. Even when in full flow, his succinct, incisive phrasing is laid out logically and eloquently. There’s never an intention of showing off his unquestionable chops for their own sake.

Alone is an album of sleepy, patient tempos, the title alluding to a more darkly reflective mood than is typical of the saxman’s work. Which means there’s little room for sweetened sentiment on evergreens such as ‘Shadow of Your Smile’ with John Coltrane’s influence an understated yet yearning presence; and ‘Stella by Starlight’ with its tortoise-like gait and aching introspection. Informed by both Dexter Gordon and Wayne Shorter for his sleepy, blurry long tones on the title track, the Charles Lloyd sideman Gerald Clayton’s elegant Herbie Hancock-ish piano is an equally engaging listen. The intoxicating ‘Moments with You’ brings to mind a Swedish sax legend Bernt Rosengren on Krzysztof Komeda’s Knife in the Water film soundtrack while ‘The Ice Queen’ finds Escoffery balancing logical and mantra-like phrasing while Carl Allen’s minimal kit work and the living legend Ron Carter’s bass both humbly serve the collective cause. A fine album then in the ‘classic’ quartet mould; but more significantly for one that digs into over-familiar territory, it’s a recording of substance. Selwyn Harris

Eliane Elias

Time And Again

Candid

Eliane Elias (v, p) plus various personnel including Conrado Goys, Marcus Teixeira, Daniel Santiago, Bill Frisell (g), Djavan (g, v), Mark Kibble (v), Mike Maineri (vb), Marc Johnson (b), Marcelo Mariano (el b), Edu Ribeiro, Peter Erskine, Cuca Teixeira (d), Davi Vieira and Marivaldo Dos Santos (perc). Rec. date not stated

If Eliane Elias’ remarkable 2021 album of duets with Chucho Valdés and Chick Corea, Mirror Mirror, focused on her dazzling pianism, and her 2023 album Quietude highlighted her characteristically understated vocal approach where bar lines dissolve away, her latest album Time And Again beautifully showcases her skills as pianist, vocalist, and composer.

From the gorgeous changes of album opener ‘At First Sight’ to the deep sense of regret expressed in the plaintive ‘Too Late’, the music-making on Time and Again is so in the pocket, the familiar Brazilian rhythms so seasoned, the empathy between the players so palpable, that it calls to mind Claude Debussy’s famous quote about music: “It’s not even the expression of a feeling, it’s the feeling itself.”

Elias touchingly dedicates ‘Falo do Amor’ to her granddaughter, Lucy, “who brings so much beauty, love, and joy to my life”, while the reflective ‘How Many Times’ features wonderful contributions from vibist Mike Maineiri and guitarist Bill Frisell. There’s also a magnificent duet with fellow Brazilian musician Djavan, performing ‘Sempre’, a song Elias composed specifically for him. First recorded as an instrumental ballad on bassist Marc Johnson’s outstanding 2012 ECM album Swept Away, Elias’ seductive vocals adroitly floating over the deep groove supplied by Johnson and drummer Peter Erskine on ‘It’s Time’ provides one of the album’s standout moments. Mark Kibble (of vocal group Take 6), who first worked with Elias on her 2015 Grammy-winning album, Made in Brazil, crafts heart-meltingly lovely backing vocals on six of the album’s eight songs. Peter Quinn

Hejira

Live at the Cockpit

Spin Jazz Productions

Hattie Whitehead (v, g), Pete Oxley (g), Ollie Weston (reeds), Chris Eldred (ky), Dave Jones (el b), Rick Finlay (d) and Marc Cecil (perc). Rec. 17 November 2023

As readers will recall from February’s Jazzwise, Hejira are a seven-piece British band dedicated to playing the music of Joni Mitchell. Their main focus is the seminal double live album Shadows and Light that she recorded in 1979 with Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Don Alias, Michael Brecker and Jaco Pastorius. And in fact, 10 of the 12 tracks on Live at the Cockpit are taken from that album, the only exceptions being ‘A Case of You’ (originally from Mitchell’s album Blue) and ‘Blue Motel Room’ (from Hejira - yes, this is getting confusing).

The first and most obvious question to ask is: why make an album that largely reproduces another album? Hattie Whitehead’s voice is spine-shiveringly like Mitchell’s, and just as full of delicacy, emotion and intelligence. But Live at the Cockpit does not simply reproduce the songs; it reinterprets them. For one thing, Mitchell plays electric guitar on her own album, whereas Whitehead plays acoustic, sharing guitar duties with bandleader Oxley.

There’s also a little less solo grandstanding here than on the original - Hejira’s aim is to serve the songs. They are a formidably tight unit, imparting a practised smoothness to the performances. The recording is of optimal quality for a live album too – helped, no doubt, by improvements to the technology over the last quarter of a century.

Anything that helps keep a band of this quality on the road is to be welcomed, and Live at the Cockpit will probably sell well at the many gigs Hejira have in their diary during the rest of 2024. Peter Jones

Meshell Ndegeocello

No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin

Blue Note

Meshell Ndegeocello (el b, v), Justin Hicks, Kenita Miller, Staceyann Chin, Hilton Als (v), Chris Bruce (g), Jebin Bruni (ky), Julius Rodriguez (org), Jake Sherman (el b), Josh Johnson (s) and Abe Rounds (d). Rec. date not stated

Marking the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth, Meshell Ndegeocello’s latest album for Blue Note, following 2023’s stellar Omnichord Real Book, takes the visionary black writer’s oeuvre as her inspiration. Across a sprawling 17 tracks, Ndegeocello draws on everything from Baldwin’s writings on race and the class struggle in America to suicide, sexual identity, Civil Rights and the artist’s responsibility to society. It is an involved and potentially overwhelming range of topics to improvise from, yet the strength of No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin lies in Ndegeocello’s capacity to subsume lofty ideas within the heartfelt thump of her groove.

While spoken word interludes from poet Staceyann Chin and critic Hilton Als take a more literal approach to Baldwin’s work, interpolating his writing into explorations of Black Lives Matter and contemporary politics, it’s in Ndegecello’s music that we get closest to the spirit of Baldwin’s urgency and vitality. From opener ‘Travel’, which weaves spoken word with syncopated funk, to the thundering hand drums and percussion of ‘Another Country’, the plaintive bass melodies of ‘What Did I Do?’ and the ecstatic West African polyrhythms of ‘Pride I’, Ndegeocello manages to instil each composition with a lively and emotionally-charged energy.

This is a work of complexity and depth, one that relies on repeated listens to gauge the many layers of its meaning but also one that can convey the sincerity of its instrumental ingenuity simply from its first sounds. Ammar Kalia

Angelica Sanchez/Chad Taylor

A Monster Is Just An Animal You Haven’t Met Yet

Intakt Records Intakt

Angelica Sanchez (p) and Chad Taylor (d). Rec. 16 January 2023

Blimey. Talk about expressing yourself without giving a shit about what anyone thinks! This free-spirited, uninhibited and at times positively wild collaboration at first intimidates with its heat, its unpredictability and what seem like deliberate attempts to alienate, but slowly draws you in to what is a fascinating and, at times, a rather beautiful sound world.

The 10 pieces here veer from the serene to the frantic, from wispy to black hole-dense, from the frightening to the welcoming; but the music always manages to pull you in, aided by Sanchez’s piano shards and dazzling runs, and by Taylor’s polyrhythmic pulse (‘Myopic Seer, ‘Threadwork’) which also provides texture (as with his cymbal work on the opener, ‘Liminal’). ‘Animistic’ sees Sanchez’s piano piercing the air around it like shattering glass or a screaming banshee, while her keyboard work on ‘Alluvial’, appropriately enough, flows like a river through ever-changing landscapes: sometimes lazily meandering, then forceful like rapids before a waterfall. Her playing on ‘Tracers of Cosmic Space’ is delicate and ethereal, like a harp, and while she relishes dissonance (‘All Alone Together’, the title track) and is defiantly in the avant-garde, there are often clever and subtle references to jazz’s roots in the blues and ragtime.

A Monster… is an album that draws the listener in far more than most avant-garde jazz waxings and more than that, is a tribute to the remarkable creative telepathy between two first-rank musicians. Kevin Whitlock

Mike Stern

Echoes and Other Songs

Artistry Music

Mike Stern (el g, bv), Chris Potter (ts), Jim Beard (p, ky), Christian McBride (el b, db), Antonio Sanchez (d), Arto Tunçboyacian (perc) plus guests on tracks 4, 5 and 9 Leni Stern (ngoni), Richard Bona (el b, v), Dennis Chambers (d) and Bob Franceschini (ss, ts). Rec. date not stated

The death of keyboardist Jim Beard at the age of 63 in March this year left many in deep shock, such was his continuous presence in the highest echelons of jazz as both player and producer with everyone from Steely Dan, to John McLaughlin and Wayne Shorter. He appears here as both player and producer on this effusive latest set from another indefatigable jazz fusion figure, Mike Stern.

No stranger to adversity himself, Stern has made an emphatic comeback from a near career-ending fall in 2017 that broke both his arms, and if anything Echoes and Other Songs is something of a late-career high for the eternally energetic six-stringer, who’s now 71 years young.

Joined by one of his hardest hitting bands in recent years – the ubiquitous Chris Potter firing from the off, McBride and Sanchez the perfect simpatico rhythm section, there’s a suitably uplifting vibe permeating these sessions, with everyone sounding overjoyed to be backing up their guitar hero Mr Stern.

Opener ‘Connections’ begins with some plucked ngoni from Mike’s wife Leni, which soon gives way to Stern’s patented minor riffing and tight unison melody lines with Potter. Stern’s solos still beguile with his artfully in-n-out lines, with the blues and his overdrive pedal never far away. His association with Cameroonian bass star Richard Bona goes back to 2001’s Voices, and they’re reunited here on three songs: the grinding funk of ‘Space Bar’, skipping vocal-harmony soaked ‘I Hope So’ and vocal-infused ‘Curtis’ – this trio of tracks also replete with guesting old chums Chambers and Franceschini on drums and sax respectively.

Echoes and Other Songs also sounds superb – taped at Power Station at Berklee NYC – Beard’s skills steering this production also extends to mixing duties alongside engineer Roy Hendrickson; more reasons to feel his loss even more keenly.

And while this set doesn’t break much new musical ground for Stern, the sheer quality of the material and performances , which are fuelled by an obvious collective joy, all amount to one of the guitarist’s strongest sets in years. It’s the perfect tribute to a much-missed friend. Mike Flynn

Tarbaby

You Think This America

Giant Step Arts

Nasheet Waits (d), Orrin Evans (p), Eric Revis (b). Rec. August 2022

Tarbaby’s You Think This America mixes Ornette Coleman, some improv-unleashing Orrin Evans originals, even the indestructible ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out’. Ornette’s jaunty ‘Dee Dee’ (from 1965’s classic trio recordings Live At The Golden Circle) gets a perkily joyous Monkish clang and a free-flow stream from Evans, and on the pianist’s groove-juggling ‘Blues (When It Comes)’ Waits’ eventual cymbal tingle and Revis’ walk makes you want to jump from your seat. There’s a hypnotically reverential sway over the leader’s brushes (his brushwork is astonishing throughout the set, from whispers to frenzy) on the Stylistics’ ‘Betcha By Golly Wow’, and the slinky ‘Nobody Knows You’ is an exquisite exercise in doing more with less. John Fordham

John Williamson

The Northern Sea

Ubuntu

John Williamson (b), Alex Wilson (p), Jonny Mansfield (vb), Alex Hitchcock (ts), Jay Davis (d) and Immy Churchill (v). Rec. 28-29 July, 3 September 2023

Hell, if you’re a bass player, why not start your solo album with a bass solo? After all, contrary to the nasty old cliché, there’s a good chance people will still be listening nine seconds into the opening track. Williamson is a recent postgrad from the Royal Academy, and also something of a mushroom expert. Musically, he lists his main influences as Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden, Charles Mingus and Bley (I’m not sure which one – presumably Carla), and has spent three years crafting the tunes on The Northern Sea. That’s probably why it sounds so comfortable and in the pocket.

Despite the album’s noticeably fresh, modern sensibility, Williamson eagerly embraces swing – unlike many of his contemporaries. ‘Contrafact 2’, for instance (there are three of them), surges along at a suicidal tempo but sounds controlled, calm and hip thanks in no small measure to the never-flustered Alex Hitchcock. ‘Contrafact 3’ is rendered with just bass, drums and saxophone, the absence of harmony making it hard to guess what the original tune might have been; not that it matters.

Williamson has been astute in his choice of collaborators. Churchill, for example (whose mum Nikki Iles produced the album), handles the wordless melody on ‘2700 Q Street Northwest’ with her usual aplomb and accuracy. And meanwhile the always melodic Mansfield does his Bobby Hutcherson thing with a sympathetic ear, particularly on the brief bass/vibes duo track – a second version of the tune ‘Gozo’.

The Northern Sea is an intriguing debut album, full of variety, an accessible and mature piece of work. Peter Jones

Kenny Barron

Beyond this Place

Artwork Records

Kenny Barron (p), Immanuel Wilkins (as), Steve Nelson (vb), Kiyoshi Kitagawa (b) and Johnathan Blake (d). Rec. date not stated

From the late 1950s, when he was a teenager barely out of high school, Kenny Barron was good enough to play piano for a bebop elite including James Moody, Lee Morgan and Dizzy Gillespie. Now 81, he’s as warmly at one with his materials and his partners as he’s ever been. For Beyond This Place, regular bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake are joined by vibraphonist Steve Nelson, and rising-star alto sax virtuoso Immanuel Wilkins, while the repertoire joins Barron originals going back to the 1970s (‘Innocence’) with newer pieces and standards (‘The Nearness of You’, Monk’s ‘We See’). A laconic and then springy original from Blake, ‘Blues on Stratford Road’, is a stretched blues showcasing Wilkins’ fresh phrasing even in the most familiar contexts.

Barron has observed that Wilkins first caught his ear for a spacious ballad sound that reminded him of Johnny Hodges, but coupled with a scorching freebop fire all of his own. The saxophonist is hauntingly voicelike on ‘The Nearness of You’, while his sparingly-applied fast passages barely land on each skimming sound. He hurtles off into soaring atonality on the fast-walking swing of ‘Scratch’, with Nelson’s gleaming precision sharply contrasting with his rawness. Barron’s liquid lyricism on ‘Innocence’ has a Corea-like suppleness, and ‘Softly As In A Morning Sunrise’ travels at a skipping pace that triggers the leader’s gleefulness - a quality also glittering from the jaunty stride-dance of ‘We See’. It’s hard to imagine the ageless Barron ever losing that twinkle. John Fordham

Matthew Bourne

This Is Not For You

The Leaf Label

Matthew Bourne (p, clo, Dulcitone). Rec. date not stated

Ignore the off-putting title - this limpid album of solo piano (with occasional cello and Dulcitone embellishments) is an immediately rewarding listen that only improves with repeated plays. Apparently drawn together from notebook sketches, out-takes and experimental revisitings there is nonetheless a clear consistency to the album, largely due to Matthew Bourne’s well-established aesthetic of expressive economy. Whether improvising or playing prepared composition, the weighted timing and harmonic precision of his music generates emotional expression from quite simple elements. His use of the pause or a single note slipped in between a series of plangent chords, somehow convey an explicit human subtext.

The first half of ‘The Mirror And Its Fragments’, for example, is merely a slowly see-sawing cello part until a harshly tinkling piano scatters despairingly across it. Inspired by Andersen’s dark fairy tale The Snow Queen, itself a metaphor for depression, the short track needs nothing more to make the same point. It is followed contrastingly by the gently celebratory 'Only When It Is', dedicated to Leeds College of Music tutor Bill Kinghorn, an early mentor of Bourne’s. The album ends powerfully with a heart-wrenching tribute to his inspirational later mentor (and, all-too briefly, playing partner) Keith Tippett, appropriately titled ‘Dedicated To You Because You Were Listening’. Leaden, heavyweight chords spaced with echoing pauses emphasising the resonating strings create an achingly sad beauty that becomes angrily forceful then subsides into exhausted resolution. It’s an epitome of grieving that warrants being scored and published for wider performance, though few players could (or maybe should) attempt to match Bourne’s delicate sureness of touch. Tony Benjamin

Etienne Charles

Creole Orchestra

Cultzck

Etienne Charles (t, arr, comp, perc), Jumaane Smith, Walter Cano, Anthony Stanco, Giveton Gelin (t), Dion Tucker, Corey Wilcox, Michael Dease (tb), Chris Glassman (btb), Michael Thomas, Godwin Louis (as, ss), Brian Hogans (as), John Ellis (ts, bcl), Seth Ebersole (ts, cl), Paul Nedzela (bs, bcl), Gina Izzo (f), Sullivan Fortner (p, ky), Alex Wintz (g), Ben Williams, Jonathan Michel (b), Obed Calvaire (d), Jorge Glem (cuatro), Pascual Landeau (maraca) plus guests René Marie, Brandon Rose (v) and DJ Logic (turntables). Rec. 28 and 29 August 2018

Trinidad-born but now US-based, trumpeter Charles makes much of his Creole antecedents and his concern for their cultural traditions and rightly so. His music infuses these varied influences, with his ‘Old School’ combining familiar big band protocols with a calypso under-pinning, while hosting crisp solos from Hogans, Ellis, Tucker, Charles himself, and Fortner. It’s busy but joyfully full-on, danceable too. ‘Poison’ is similarly multi-layered, with a stop-start solo from Hogans, percussion akimbo, plus funk guitar from Wintz and a rap by Rose.

The ensemble passages and band writing score heavily throughout even if some of the added effects don’t always add that much. ‘Think Twice’ by Monty Alexander has a neat groove, great brass attack, with Smith and Dease shouting out, Fortner comping distinctively. René Marie gives ‘I Wanna Be Evil’ an old-time vaudeville feel with Fortner pacing her brilliantly and ‘Holy City’ is a Charles showcase, with his Lee Morgan-like command, amid some chunky writing and soulful tenor from Ebersole.

In contrast comes Sweets Edison’s timeless ‘Centerpiece’ with Marie singing Hendrick’s words in bluesy fashion, aided again by Fortner’s Monk-ian piano, the theme handled in world-weary style by the reeds and ‘bones in turn. Think Carmen Bradford and the Basie band, Charles adding solo riffs. Then again, there’s such sturdy war-horses as ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’ and ‘Night Train’, each given righteous treatment. There’s so much here, such a mixture of cultural influences, rhythmic, vocal, and instrumental, that it might take the rest of this magazine to fully describe it all. Suffice to say that Charles has a whole lot to say and the right kind of players to help him say it. It’s just surprising that it’s taken him six years to get it out. Peter Vacher

Neil Cowley Trio

Entity

Hide Inside Records

Neil Cowley (p), Rex Horan (b) and Evan Jenkins (d). Rec. date not stated

Is it really seven years since the last Cowley Trio release? Well, you can finally scratch that itch, because they’re back – and as mysterious, melancholic and mesmerising as ever.

Entity is an appropriate monicker as the 11-song album unfolds like a single piece of music, elegiac, yearning and imbued with a sense of loss as exemplified in the opening ‘Marble’. If that sounds like a downer, panic not: Cowley’s wit and melodicism remains, but the element of bombast has been filtered out.

What’s left, almost Satie-like in its minimalism and seductive hooks, is as attractive as ever. All the echoey ambience remains from earlier albums, while the tasteful use of electronics, as on ‘V and A’, persists, but is now more seamlessly integrated. We may miss impish romps like ‘She Eats Spiders’, although ‘Adam Alphabet’ has an upbeat, chunky rhythm, but it’s the very integrity of Entity, it’s singularity of mood, that is its strength. Welcome back; a must for fans. Andy Robson

Elaine Delmar

Speak Low

Ubuntu Music

Elaine Delmar (v), Barry Green (p), Jim Mullen (g), Simon Thorpe (b) and Andy Panayi (f). Rec. January 2023

A beautiful collection of songs selected from Elaine Delmar’s 50-plus-year career, Speak Low begins with a wondrously atmospheric version of the great Fred Hersch/Norma Winstone song, ‘Stars’, with its incredibly rich harmonic palette and subtle blurring of the lines between major and minor tonalities. Although she has been performing most of the album material for many years, Delmar – Vocalist of the Year at the 2023 Parliamentary Jazz Awards – hasn’t recorded any of the songs until now.

On ‘Let Me Love You’, she adopts an intimate, understated, sotto voce whisper to great effect, while ‘Close Your Eyes’ possesses something of Shirley Horn’s exquisitely languid approach to ballads. A heart-meltingly tender take on the Kurt Weill/Ogden Nash title track sees special guest Andy Panayi join on flute, guitarist Jim Mullen peels off a gorgeous solo on ‘There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York’, and Delmar’s gorgeous, impressionistic ballad version of ‘Tea for Two’ creates a singular sense of time being suspended, a feeling bolstered by pianist Barry Green’s final unresolved chord.

Delmar considers the featured artists her musical family, and there’s a palpable feeling of musical conviviality and communion. Recorded at Red Gables Studios by Dick Hammett, produced by Delmar and Simon Thorpe (who also assumes mixing duties), the album also sounds terrific. Peter Quinn

Kit Downes

Dr Snap

Bimhuis Records

Kit Downes (p), Ketija Ringa Karahona (f), Ben van Gelder (as), Robin Fincker (ts), Percy Pursglove (tp), Reinier Baas (g), Petter Eldh (db) Sun-Mi Hong (d), James Maddren, Veslemøy Narvesen (d, perc) and Juliane Schütz (live visuals). Rec. November 2022

I think Kit Downes did himself no harm at all relocating from London to Berlin about a decade ago; he has since become one of very few British jazz musicians in recent generations to have earned a highly credible international reputation not only as a singular pianist/keyboardist/organist, but as a consistently high quality multi-project contemporary jazz leader and collaborator.

More evidence arrives with a new release, Dr Snap, recorded live in 2022 at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, a prestigious European concert venue that commissioned the material as a part of Bimhuis Productions’ ‘Reflex’ series.

Downes’ striking writing and arrangements are typically stimulating and inventive, and never looking to obfuscate the listener. The band sounds in high spirits, including the tenor saxophonist Robin Fincker, another ex-Loop Collective jazz artist who has grown artistically since moving base to mainland Europe, in his case returning to his native France. A Tom Challenger composition ‘Full Dress’ shows Downes’ gift of artfully merging the rhythmically unpredictable with highly engaging storyline melodies; ‘Mirror’ sounds something like a Stravinsky composition for woodwind ensemble remodelled for the 21st century; ‘Familiar’ has a Loose Tubes-ish theme and robust soloing with Petter Eldh and James Maddren, the pianist’s partners in trio Enemy, laying down a taut hiphop-inspired bass/drums combo.

Titles are meaningfully balanced between smaller chamber and larger group settings, boundaries blurred between improv and composition, and the stylistic net gradually widens from avant-funk to experimental New Music through to electronica but always organically serving the whole. Another Kit Downes recording that demands your attention. Selwyn Harris

Jihye Lee Orchestra

Infinite Connections

Motéma Music

Jihye Lee (cond, arr, comp), Brian Pareschi, Nathan Eklund, David Smith, Stuart Mack (t, flhn), Mike Fahie, Alan Ferber, Nick Grinder, Jeff Nelson (tb), Ben Kono (as, f, picc), David Pietro (as, f), Jason Rigby, Jonathan Lowery (ts, f, cl), Carl Maraghi (bs, bcl), Alex Goodman (g), Adam Birnbaum (p), Matt Clohesy (b), Keita Ogawa (perc), Jared Schonig (d) plus Ambrose Akinmusere (t). Rec. 17 and 18 October 2023

The South Korean former pop singer and Berklee-graduated big-band composer Jihye Lee confirmed how eloquently she could balance fast-moving postbop rhythm-switches and Gil Evans-reminiscent textural clouds on 2021’s terrific Daring Mind. Its successor, Infinite Connections, is rhythmically and improvisationally bolder still, with Lee’s classy lineup augmented here by star trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, and the recording once again co-produced by eclectic orchestral maestro Darcy James Argue.

Infinite Connections invokes family crises and crossroads for Lee, inspired by the life-story of her grandmother, who passed through an orphaned childhood to teenage marriage, life under 1950s Korean patriarchal strictures, and troubled last years - but it also celebrates Lee’s own triumphant journey toward finding her own voice and identity. The pieces are introduced by traditional Korean rhythms (a key role for Snarky Puppy percussionist Keita Ogawa) but quickly shift into fast-changing jazz guises.

The opening ‘Surrender’ finds Akinmusire murmuring and probing over a quietly sonorous drum pattern before surging horn riffs push him toward longer lines and then rocketing double-time figures amid breezily coaxing flutes. ‘We Are All From The Same Stream’ mixes sharply punctuated high-register riffing and graceful solos from trombonist Alan Ferber and tenorist Jason Rigby; ‘Born In 1935’ delicately develops ethereal chordal sways to a dramatic crescendo to release an exquisite alto-sax rhapsody from Maria Schneider stalwart Dave Pietro; while Akinmusire’s register-vaulting second solo spot is a standout of the album on the ghostly, echoing ‘You Are My Universe’. It’s beautiful, free-spirited music. John Fordham

Nicole McCabe

Mosaic

Ghost Note Records

Nicole McCabe (as), Julius Rodriguez (p, el p), Logan Kane (b), Tim Angulo (d), plus Jon Hatamiya (tb), Aaron Janik (t) and Jeff Parker (g). Rec. date not stated

Another month, another fast-rising US West Coast name emerges and starts making waves, here in the form of Los Angeles alto saxophonist Nicole McCabe on this, her impassioned fourth album. With the long shadows of mid-2010s titans Kamasi Washington and Thundercat, and latterly drummer Louis Cole, doing much to knock down genre-boundaries and gatecrash the mainstream, McCabe is very much part of a new breed of players happy to wear their jazz stripes but create malleable, elastic versions the likes of post-bop or even fusion, with melodies to the fore and a bristling pulse.

Mosaic is sonically acoustic, but much like fellow fire-breathing altoist Immanuel Wilkins, McCabe attacks each phrase with a gutsy power, her chewy tone cutting decisively through pianist Rodriguez’s wide voicings. It’s also good to hear bassist Logan Kane, her life and musical partner, holding his own on upright with the scatter-gun beats of Tim Angulo generating some real rhythm-section heat.

Former Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker only appears on one track, the moody ‘Tight Grip’, where he aptly shadows McCabe’s sax before soloing cooly. But it’s Parker’s hand on the production tiller throughout, and there’s a real sense of artistic maturity about the session – the inclusion of trumpet and trombone on two tracks demonstrating the altoist’s arranging ambitions are also on the up. Nifty unison bass-and-left-hand piano lines frequently add interest too, such as when the resourceful Rodriguez happily switches from an unfurling solo to spiky octave jumps to boost the leader’s jabbering lines on the shifting sensibilities of ‘Walking Statue’, that remains anything
but static.

McCabe is effusive throughout, the pensive closer, the samba-ish ‘Derschke’, featuring one of her most angular improvisations that builds to a vein-busting climax that the great Kenny Garrett would be proud of.

There’s a new alto-slinging sax player on the block, and with this album Nicole McCabe sounds like she’s truly arrived. Mike Flynn

Pat Metheny

MoonDial

BMG

Pat Metheny (acoustic baritone guitar). Rec. December 2023

Metheny places this excellent recording in a lineage preceded by One Quiet Night and What’s It All About – two solo guitar recordings – but this is something more. Using a custom-made Linda Manzer Baritone Nylon String Guitar, Metheny has come up with an unusual slant in how he tunes the instrument whereby the middle strings are tuned up an octave to the general tuning of the Baritone instrument (which is about a 4th or a 5th lower that the standard guitar). While that snippet of information may not mean a lot to the non-guitar playing fraternity, it opened up a whole new dimension of harmony that had been unavailable with the standard tuning, inspiring Metheny during the course of a 50-date plus tour to push himself deeper into the exploration of the modified sound palette now available to him.

It also provides the powerful motivating force behind this recording, where he comes up with a repertoire of 14 originals and standards he feels captured what he calls the “magic of this new sound”. Some of the finest albums in jazz somehow find a place in the listener’s life, often fulfilling a function – relaxation to stimulation, background or foreground music and so on. For Metheny, this album is a dusk-to-sunrise record, hard-core mellow – music to fill night, or as Metheny says, offering something to the insomniacs and all-night folks.

Metheny, a compelling soloist, be it electric or acoustic, hits the right mood here with performances of subtlety, nuance, warmth and humanity on The Beatles’ ‘Here There And Everywhere,’ the Matt Dennis masterpiece ‘Angel Eyes,’ and the David Raskin (he who wrote ‘Laura’) standard ‘My Love and I’. Stuart Nicholson

Jordina Milla & Barry Guy

Live In Munich

ECM

Jordina Mills (p) and Barry Guy (b). Rec. 2022

Catalan pianist Jordina Milla and British bassist Barry Guy are highly skilled improvisers, as this Munich concert attests, but they also have fascinating individual sounds. The former’s touch on the keyboard, and the latter’s on the fretboard are both marked by subversion and invention in equal measure.

The six parts of their spontaneous conversation certainly catch the ear for timbres alone, as the 22- minute opener summarizes the richness of vocabulary that Guy has developed over 50 years. His upper register articulation is startling, to the extent that he hybridizes cello, violin and harp without pastiching any one, his needle-sharp glissando assuming a vocal quality on occasion. Most importantly, it melds to great effect with Milla’s work on the piano interior, and her stark scraping and dampening of notes make the exchanges bristle with a febrile, electric eel energy. Yet the wide dynamic range, and desire to come at tonality from exciting tangents is supplemented by the gentlest of melodies, peeking through the maelstroms of sound, bringing to the performance tenderness that offsets the turbulence, especially when Guy bows his bass so lightly it wafts and whistles in quavered melancholy.

In contrast, Milla raking the strings unleashes a thunderous power that electronic music producers would do well to analyse. Emphatically original, uncompromisingly provocative work from an outstanding duo. Kevin Le Gendre

Oded Tzur

My Prophet

ECM

Oded Zzur (ts), Nitai Hershkovits (p), Petros Klampanis (b) and Cyrano Almeida (d). Rec. November 2023

This is the third minor masterpiece in succession from Tzur, following Here Be Dragons (2019) and Isabela (2021). Throughout the personnel has remained unchanged, so important in developing a unified group sound that evolves through learned and intuitive responses to each other's playing on the bandstand. So important too, because every musical nuance and inflection are part of a collective sound that on the one hand possess unity and depth and on the other a part of a spiritual element that permeates Tzur’s performances.

Each composition seems finely wrought, and, like medieval craftsmen, every phrase seems fashioned for the ages. This is music of simmering intensity – Tzur’s tone, arresting in its otherworldly spirituality, spans an emotional divide from confessional intimacy to authoritative clarity, as he does on ‘Renata.’ But whether it is ‘Through a Land Unsown’ or ‘Last Bike Ride in Paris,’ the unity of purpose to serve the expressive needs of the composition – either in solo or ensemble – Klampanis and Tzur add compelling expressivity that invites contemplation and meditation. Stuart Nicholson

Mike Westbrook

Band of Bands

Westbrook Records

Mike Westbrook (p), Chris Biscoe (as, ss), Pete Whyman (as, ss, cl), Karen Street (acc, v), Marcus Vergette (b), Coach York (d) and Kate Westbrook (v). Rec. 25 November 2023

Westbrook’s Band of Bands could hardly be better titled. This is a new band comprised of master musicians that have played in many of the Westbrooks’ line ups across the decades, from the street wise Brass Band to the assembled masses of the Uncommon Orchestra.

This sumptuously recorded live show sunbursts open with a joyous post-bop ‘Glad Day’, from the Westbrook Blake album of the same name, and includes the inevitable nod to Ellington with a dazzling re-work of Strayhorn’s ‘Johnny Come Lately’. That’s not the obvious context for an accordion solo, but Street’s contributions are formidable throughout, typically reflecting that Westbrook gift for allying uncommon combinations of instruments.

The band also profits from the hard swinging, foot-to-the-floor bass/drum combo of Vergette and York. But when the band takes it down as on newer sung material like ‘Yellow Dog’, an easeful grace emerges. And only Kate Westbrook could out-Dietrich Dietrich on the wickedness of ‘Black Market’, with Street again outstanding.

There are virtues too numerous to mention herein, but the band’s spirit is summed up in the closing ‘What I Like’, a Kate lyric celebrating life’s treasure of pleasure. A band for all seasons from composers with a gift for conjuring up the gladness of hearts. Here’s to life. Andy Robson

Norma Winstone/Kit Downes

Outpost of Dreams

ECM

Norma Winstone (v) and Kit Downes (p). Rec. 2023

Having talked to Norma and Kit about this record (see Jazzwise, May 2024) and then hearing them in concert at this year’s Cheltenham Jazz Festival, the arrival of the album was eagerly anticipated. And it doesn’t disappoint. The intimacy and warm acoustic of the studio in Udine, Italy works even better for their collaboration than at the small Parabola Theatre in Gloucestershire, and so Norma’s opening lyrics about winter flames reflected in windows immediately conjure up imagery that’s captured by Kit’s inventive piano.

Nine of the 10 songs have original lyrics by Norma, and they work well, not least allowing the duo to open up plenty of space in – for example – Ralph Towner’s ‘Beneath an Evening Sky’. It’s an object lesson that creativity can be subtle and spacious – never better than on the traditional song ‘Black is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair’. When we get to the closing ‘Rowing Home’ we have shared a journey with them through a range of repertoire, from Towner and Carla Bley to John Taylor, as well as four memorable pieces by Kit. A treasure of an album. Alyn Shipton

Chick Corea/Béla Fleck

Remembrance

Thirty Tigers

Chick Corea (p) and Béla Fleck (bjo). Rec. 2019

‘Monk’s ‘Bemsha Swing’ is an absolute barnstormer of blistering improv counterpoint in the head, turning to hurtling swing-comping and solo-swapping as it unfolds. Scarlatti gets a cameo role in some deliciously interwoven baroque pirou-ettes, and Fleck’s jagged, zigzaggy ‘Small Potatoes’ hints at the sonically exploratory free-playing ingenuity Corea touched on with 1970-71’s Circle, but which his mainstream acclaim never opened a path back to.’ John Fordham

The best jazz albums of 2024 (so far)

Devin Daniels

Tord Gustavsen Trio

Samara Joy

Fernando Huergo Big Band

Claire Martin

Michael Mayo

The Necks

Aaron Parks

Thom Rotella

Alan Barnes & David Newton

Emmet Cohen

Nubya Garcia

Lux Quartet

Milton Nascimento & esperanza spalding

Nala Sinephro

Melinda Sullivan/Larry Goldings

Alice Zawadzki/Fred Thomas/Misha Mullov-Abbado

Miguel Zenón

Lakecia Benjamin

Daniel Casimir

Wayne Escoffery

Eliane Elias

Hejira

Meshell Ndegeocello

Angelica Sanchez/Chad Taylor

Mike Stern

Tarbaby

John Williamson

Kenny Barron

Matthew Bourne

Etienne Charles

Neil Cowley Trio

Elaine Delmar

Kit Downes

Jihye Lee Orchestra

Nicole McCabe

Pat Metheny

Jordina Milla & Barry Guy

Oded Tzur

Mike Westbrook

Norma Winstone/Kit Downes

Chick Corea/Béla Fleck

John Escreet

Sean Khan Presents the Modern Jazz and Folk Ensemble

Kiefer Trio

Zara McFarlane

David Murray

Tomeka Reid

Kathrine Windfeld Sextet

(ahmed)

Jamie Baum

Joonas Haavisto/Kestutis Vaiginis

Gary Husband

Christian McBride and Edgar Meyer

Jasmine Myra

Ron Miles

Julie Sassoon/Lothar Ohlmeier/Mia Ohlmeier

Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers

Jack Walrath

Vasilis Xenopoulos/Paul Edis Quartet

Black Lives

Equal Spirits

Amaro Freitas

Bill Frisell

Fred Hersch

Mark Lockheart

Kandace Springs

Melissa Aldana

Echoes of the Inner Prophet

Doncaster Jazz Alumni

50 Years

Flo and The Murmurs

The Waves

Ruth Goller

Skyllumina

James Brandon Lewis Quartet

Transfiguration

Kjetil Mulelid