Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers!

It’s hard to believe that we’re nearing the end of one of the most tumultuous years in living memory, but for all its unprecedented events, 2020 has been a surprisingly good year for jazz albums. We don’t say that lightly, but the fruits of recordings in 2019 and the early months of this year have produced some truly excellent albums. The fact that Maria Schneider – whose all-conquering album Data Lords swept to the top of our end-of-year-critics-poll – produced such a magisterial orchestral artistic statement about how big data, tech companies and those ever-present AI-driven algorithms now dominate our lives, says a lot about the powerful visions of the most creative jazz musicians working today.

And as lockdowns continue, recorded jazz has perhaps gained in its significance once more. This is of course set against the terrible year it’s been for live music, and we can only hope that somehow, some way, the live jazz scene can recover quickly once the nightmare of Covid-19 has passed. Whatever lies ahead, we would like to thank all of our loyal and deeply passionate readers, friends, musicians and colleagues for supporting Jazzwise this year.

The music goes on and so shall we.

Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year to all our readers

from

Mike, Jon, Kevin, Ros, Paula and David