The Best Jazz of 2012

Jazz today remains the music that stays alive through a remarkable alchemy. The best work in the genre is a shape-shifting wonder. On this list, traditions that go back to the jazz roots co-exist with modern pop tunes, and the avant-garde edges of the music blend in fluid ease with tonal beauty.

This list again combats the somewhat stereotypical notion that there is a jazz battle between stuffy museum curators and wild-eyed experimentalists. On the recent season of HBO’s Treme, the battle is made New Orleans-specific as a main character tries to learn more about playing bebop after a career playing mostly traditional jazz and R&B styles. Either way, it’s an artificial conflict among the top players. The center of jazz bridges tradition and innovation so fluently that these players clearly grew up in the mix, not in camps.


There are a couple of trends that might be teased out of this list. Only one record (Mehldau’s Ode on Nonesuch) is on a “major label”. Even Blue Note and Verve have taken turns toward safer material. There is also not much to choose from in thrilling vocal jazz right now. Mainstream singers such as Diana Krall and Esperanza Spaulding (the latter’s Radio Music Society was a very good jazz record that merely sounded like a pop record) did fine work in 2012, but jazz singing remains weirdly handcuffed by “The American Songbook”. Cassandra Wilson released a record that got beyond it, but hardly her best, and the more-than-affable John Pizzarelli covered Tom Waits and Elvis Costello. But these records weren’t quite in my top ten.

On the most positive side, piano trios continue to innovate in amazing different ways—three very different ones are on this list. And great jazz seems now to come from leaders who night play any instrument in the band; this list has leaders on piano, guitar, bass, drums, trumpet, tenor sax, and alto sax. With the US presidential election still ringing in our ears, it’s also worth noting the continuing multicultural trend, with leaders coming in a huge variety of colors and cultures—and with two women in the top ten, neither of whom sings or plays piano (a number that perhaps ought to be larger but, given jazz’s history, this is progress).

Jazz, long ago banished from the pop charts, thrives. Here are some of the year’s riches, presented this year with my very-favorites first.

(Read the entire article here: The Best Jazz of 2012)

The List, Unadorned:

1. Vijay Iyer Trio: Accelerando (ACT)
Accelerando is simply the best jazz record in recent memory. On this recording, this veteran piano trio—Iyer on piano, Stephan Crump on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums—plays with an incredible degree of integration, sounding like it has fully worked out a series of ideas about how a band should deal with rhythm and dynamic interaction in today’s jazz.

2. Dave Douglas Quintet: Be Still (Greenleaf)
If I ranked Accelerando above this crystalline beauty by the great trumpeter, then it is by a hair or less. Be Still is incomparably lovely: a blend of jazz quintet colors, a folk singer’s plaintive clarity, and hymns and other devotional material that has an emotional transparency that is rare in jazz.

3. Tim Berne: Snakeoil (ECM)
Tim Berne has been making uncompromising jazz beyond boundaries for an entire career, mostly on his own label. Snakeoil finds him on the esteemed ECM label with a new band, a quartet featuring his alto sax, pianist Matt Mitchell (also on the Dave Douglas record—playing very differently but no less well), clarinet work from Oscar Noriega, and drummer Ches Smith.

4. Mary Halvorson Quintet: Bending Bridges (Firehouse 12)
Bending Bridges is the second beautiful and urgent recording from Mary Halvorson’s quintet, with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, saxophonist Jon Irabagon (again), bassist John Hébert and Ches Smith (again) on drums. The band plays with precision and fire on a series of Halvorson tunes that entertain and tell stories.

5. Rez Abbasi Trio: Continuous Beat (Enja)
Rez Abbasi has been so active and so productive in recent years that it seems like you almost have to pencil him into the top ten list in March, just in case he releases anything new in the coming year. And he always does. This debut by his loose and fun trio smacks of a truly fresh appeal—having not a little in common with the very first trio record of jazz star Pat Metheny.

6. The Bad Plus: Made Possible (Entertainment One)
The Bad Plus have been the poster boys for a certain kind of new jazz for about a decade. They covered “Smells Like a Teen Spirit” on their first major release, and they did it with a muscular seriousness that suggests both an interest in finding an audience and no room for watering down their sensibility. Made Possible continues to live up to that dual tradition.

7. Bill McHenry: La Peur du Vide (Sunnyside)
Bill McHenry is one of those 40 year-old guys who seems to have arrived all of a sudden, even thought that’s unfair. Certainly his new disc, La Peur du Vide is a perfect balance of modern tradition and daring adventure.

8. Brad Meldau: Ode (Nonesuch)
Ode is a more traditional jazz record than Day Is Done, the previous record by this working trio. It features concise themes and long improvisations, with brilliant rhythmic play running throughout the trio’s incredible dialogue.

9. Matt Wilson's Arts and Crafts: An Attitude for Gratitude (Palmetto)
If there is one true “grower” on this list, it is An Attitude for Gratitude, a record that offers so much and with so little apparent effort that it was maybe easy to take for granted on first listen. Two brilliant standouts are a trio take on Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (Gary Versace on piano, along with the leader’s loose drumming and bassist Martin Wind) and then a melancholy “Happy Days are Here Again”.

10. Linda Oh: Initial Here (Greenleaf)
Linda Oh is currently the bassist in Dave Douglas’s quintet, and her second solo album is one of the year’s treats.

Kurt Elling: 1619 Broadway, The Brill Building Project

In sheer talent and bravado, there’s not a more remarkable jazz singer out there than Kurt Elling. His instrument, a baritone to tenor beast that is pliant, rich, and utterly athletic, has no peer in jazz. And he has been making a series of records of great imagination—collaborations with his long-time pianist Lawrence Hobgood that take on the jazz repertoire in interesting ways.

The latest is 1619 Broadway, a reference to the address of the famous “Brill Building” in Manhattan where a couple generations of great songwriters created a body of work that spanned the late period of “The Great American Songbook” and the first wave (or two) of rock ‘n’ roll. This new album, then, takes in an idiosyncratic swath of American songs, from Ellington (“Tutti for Cootie”) to doo-wop (“I Only Have Eyes For You”) to Bacharach/David (“A House Is Not a Home”) to ‘70s singer-songwriters (Carole King and Paul Simon).

And, because he is a very interesting interpreter, Elling gets at these tunes in singular ways. The opener, “On Broadway”, works from a delectable seven-note lick that underpins the whole tune in a hip and slightly menacing way. The lick (for bassist Clark Sommers and guitarist John McLean) weaves through a strange time signature, with a couple extra beats breaking up the groove every few bars, and it rides atop electric piano comping from Hobgood—not his usual axe. It’s a good reading of the tune, no doubt, even framed by a bunch of street sounds and voices (people telling Elling they don’t want to hire his ‘ooo-bop-a-doo’ vocal talent, ironically).

But some of the gimmicky-ness of this track drags down 1619 Broadway in other places. The Brill Building was home to plenty of classic songwriting, but Elling doesn’t avoid some of the novelty content that came out of Brill.

On the other hand, there are a four of five performances here that are as wonderful as anything Elling has ever done. And that means that they are timeless vocal jazz that busts down barriers. The funk feel that McLean puts beneath “You Send Me” is a great butt-shaking counterpoint to Elling’s simple take on the vocal line. This is a classic oil-vinegar kind of idea, with the tight drumming (Kendrick Scott) and minimal piano work just setting up the vocal for success. The band grooves really hard, and then Elling doesn’t have to overwork it, just twisting his voice a bit here and there to draw the juice out of the simple melody. The layers of background vocals (Elling, overdubbing nicely) are beautiful, and everything fits.

There are two other tracks here that are so good that I can’t stop listening to them in endless repetition. First, Elling has recorded here the very best version of “A House Is Not a Home” I’ve ever heard. This track contains no tricks or transformations. Rather, this is a brilliant singer taking on a great song with the support of a sympathetic band. The quartet (McLean with the trio) is all pastel colors and subtle support, and Elling brings his most even and lovely sound to the lyrics. Elling can do just about anything, so it is his restraint here that is admirable. The arrangement is very specific in places, with certain key words (“ends—in—teaaaaaaars”) being placed carefully along with the band, but in other places everything is open and Elling moves the notes to suit a whispered mood. Hobgood also plays a crystalline solo that is just right.






The highlight of the collection, however, is a duo for just Elling and Hobgood on Paul Simon’s “An American Tune”. This is one of those classic songs that exists somewhat under the radar and in the shadow of so many other great Simon songs. But here Elling rescues the song, for me at least, making me wonder why it hasn’t been covered by a million other artists in the last 30 years. Hobgood doesn’t significantly rework the song’s harmonies. He doesn’t have to. Rather, he reads the gospel chords with sensitivity and patience. Elling states the first line of the melody a cappella (“Many is the time I’ve been mistaken and many times confused”) before the piano joins, quietly. As Elling sings the refrain, “But I’m alright, I’m alright”, his vulnerability is said with no extra strain or effort. It is the perfect sound for this sentiment. When they get to the song’s bridge, Elling finally reaches up for some power, and it shatters you: “And I dreamed I was flying / And from high above I could see / The Statue of Liberty sailing out to sea.” By the end of this performance, I felt that I had never heard the song before and, truly, I hadn’t. (Plus, uh, I was crying.) Elling and Hobgood now own “An American Tune” as surely as Sinatra owned “Come Fly with Me”.

Read my entire PopMatters review here: Kurt Elling: 1619 Broadway, The Brill Building Project

My Goodbye to Dave: Taking Five with the Late Dave Brubeck

When pianist Dave Brubeck died last week, many jazz fans lost the man who first taught them how to love the music—and to learn to love the possibilities of passion and adulthood.

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The death of jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck on 5 December 2012, one day short of his 92nd birthday, was a day of mourning for many jazz fans. So many of us came to jazz through Brubeck—his strange and stunning music had a way of hooking the ear of jazz novices.

Critics found it easy to dismiss Brubeck over the years, unfairly. The truth, as I wrote in a career retrospective back in 2008 (“Looking Back at Brubeck” (21 August 2008), is that he was a compelling and swinging player and leader. Innovative, too.


But upon his death, my reaction is less as a critic than as a grateful fan. For me and many others, his was the first music that opened my ears. But it was more than that: he sometimes lacked subtlety, but Brubeck taught many of us to love the whole idea of passion and abandon in our lives.

In 1974 I was just a kid in 8th grade who’d been hearing some cool and otherworldly music on a New York radio station that seeped through my clock radio when I had my bedroom doors closed. I’d barely heard the word “jazz” and certainly didn’t know who Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie were. But certain tunes the DJs played more often than others got into my head like a pretty girl’s smile, and I heard the DJs say, “The Dave Brubeck Quartet”.

Soon enough I’d bought the record, a two-LP set on Columbia of this guy’s All-Time Greatest Hits. It had a big gatefold opening with illustrations of the players on the outside and a long set of notes by Mort Goode that went through what these guys were up to. And a couple hip friends and I spent the better part of the next year listening to those songs over and over again, as if contained the secrets of growing up.

“Take Five” and “Blue Rondo a la Turk”. “It’s a Raggy Waltz” and “The Duke”. We bobbed our heads and tapped our feet and we set our hands out in front of us and pretended we were playing the piano or the alto sax, fingering the notes of these ingenious made-up solos from memory and instinct.

Of course, this music did contain the secrets of growing up. For us. This was the music that allowed us become ourselves, to set ourselves apart from the pack and start experiencing the possibility that the world—and our hearts—were bigger than “Stairway to Heaven” and Three Dog Night (as fun as that all was). Brubeck’s music was somehow an utterly pure expression of that freedom while also an easy pleasure: strong melody and insistent rhythm.

Mostly, like so many other folks, we loved “Take Five”.



The version on All-Time Greatest Hits was the one that’s been played on the radio (and since, in TV ads and everywhere else) a million times. The tune’s composer, Paul Desmond, plays his airy alto sax, while Brubeck plays the famous bouncing figure in 5/4 time that is the signature of the song. The winding but spikey melody on the first part of the song was tricky to scat along to at first, but then it came quickly to your ear—played over a simple pair of chords that never changed. Then the bridge had a set of suddenly moving harmonies over which Desmond floated a melody of amazing symmetry and ease.


Best, though, was the improvising. I’m not sure we even knew what that word meant when we were 14. But there was this saxophone player, with Brubeck bouncing that figure beneath him (mm-bump, mm-bummmm, boom-boom, mm-bump mm-bummmm, boom-boom, on and onward) unspooling a set of notes that were spontaneous but perfect—notes that are so logical and right that I can sing every one of them right now from memory.

“Take Five”, my friend Bobby says, “is the essential American musical performance of the third quarter of the 20th century.” And he may be right. Its rhythm momentum and harmonic simplicity arguably exploited part of what was making rock such a powerful force around that time (the take I’m discussing was recorded in 1959), and it prefigured Contrane’s more critically lauded experiments in recording over a static harmonic pattern that would a come a year later (My Favorite Things, 1960). Also that solo, while brief, was a completely open “jam” over no particular chordal pattern. In its freedom but simplicity, it was the shape of jazz (and rock) to come.

More thrilling than that record to us, however, was a live version of “Take Five” that we found in Bobby’s father’s record collection, a version with Gerry Mulligan’s baritone sax taking Desmond’s place. Last Set at Newport (1971) contained a “Take Five” that was faster, and it was more aggressive. Mulligan dug into the melody with a deft brawniness, low in his register. The drummer is now Alan Dawson, who is punching the 5/4 figure like mad with accents and snare clicks. And as Mulligan begins his solo, he is taking no prisoners right from the start. Very soon, Brubecks’ punching chords get weirder, less regular, and Dawson is essentially playing his own improvised solo beneath the baritone solo. Brubeck’s solo is only tangentially related to the chords of the song in a whole bunch of places, and his rhythmic play gets adventurous very quickly. Is it too much to say that this performance is essentially avant-garde? Probably, but not by much.

Listening to this second version of “Take Five”, climaxed by a flamboyant drum solo that has a reckless quality, sticks flying every possible way, which Brubeck then joins back into in his high register so that becomes a mad duet before quieting down into a subtle lesson in how simple patterns become more interesting as they are repeated across a polyrhythm. Brubeck jumps back in with abandon, becoming a virtual pianist machine-gun. The theme returns and the crowd goes fabulous nuts. So too did we, as 14-year-old boys.

That performance, by a 50 year-old pianist in the ripe center of his storied career, changed us. Sitting on Bobby’s bed, listening to the sounds leap off the vinyl, initiated us into all the things that would soon come to matter: abandon and sex, ecstasy and intelligence, serious ideas and sensual pleasure in one package. For me at least, jazz still stands for all those pleasures to this day.

“Take Five” and Dave Brubeck opened the door, and I would soon pass through to get enveloped in Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sonny Sharrock, Louis Armstrong and Cecil Taylor. My Brubeck albums would go unlistened-to for long stretches.

But this week, with the man himself gone, I can replay them in my head without so much as dropping the needle onto wax. I remember and love every note.

Taking Five with the Late Dave Brubeck

Rez Abbasi Trio: Continuous Beat

In past outings, jazz guitarist Rez Abbasi has created challenging bands that mixed and matched voices in ways that fostered cultural cross-pollination and dressed up his strong compositions. Continuous Beat is a different kind of collection, and it may just be the leader’s best. Certainly it is his most joyful and pure: a trio record that really makes us appreciate Abbasi as a guitar player, as an interpreter, and as a writer of irresistible tunes.

This band—with John Hebert on bass and Satoshi Takeishi on drums—plays as one but in a state on continual conversation. Hebert’s lines are strong and independent, ripe in low tone and interesting all on their own. Takeishi plays such that he is constantly creating a poly-rhythmic dance, pushing and pulling the groove without overwhelming the rest of the band. And with a leader who is as melodic as Abbasi, the total package is a joy to listen to in every measure.

While this is no “smooth jazz” outing, the spirit about Continuous Beat is as appealing and easy on the ears as a Pat Metheny record. Indeed, the inevitable comparison is to Metheny’s first trio record, Bright Size Life from 1975. As on that sparkling debut, this band achieves a perfect balance between consonance and departure. This is jazz that plays straight to what audiences love—melody and infectious rhythm—without sacrificing group conversation and adventure.

As the title implies, this new record is rich in a pulsating groove. “Divided Attention” uses a tricky time signature but doesn’t skimp of propulsion, with the guitar and drums rapping out a syncopated groove that becomes the melody itself. Abbasi’s ability to pluck a killer melody starts in his statements using a “clean” sound on the head, then it shifts to a more distorted sound for the true solo, with the lines of improvisation starting to get faster and harder over time. “Back Skin”, another original, works a memorable melody through both the bass line and the guitar lead (played here on a guitar-synth that uses a sound less grating than Metheny’s), leading to a strong solo that flows naturally like a river over the same hooky groove until the band increases the tempo and takes things forward with rushing momentum, twice shifting tempo. It’s a perfect example of how Continuous Beat refuses to play it too safe.

Read my entire PopMatters review here:  Rez Abbasi Trio: Continuous Beat

JAZZ TODAY: The Many Voices of Trumpeter and Composer Dave Douglas

The most moving music of 2012 for me has surely been the collection Be Still, by trumpeter Dave Douglas. A serene and shimmering marriage between jazz and devotional hymns, Be Still was inspired by the death of Douglas’s mother—and it extinguished any notion that jazz is all cerebellum and no heart.

That this great work should come from Douglas in 2012 is hardly a surprise. Douglas has been a critical voice—and recently a critical mentor to younger players—in jazz for 20 years. And that it should mean that much to me is also not surprise. Douglas and I grew up in the same place and the same time, and—as he reflects the loss of his parents in his music—has many of my own concerns in his heart.

His music is personal. Putting aside Be Still, that may seem odd, as he is mainly a voice in today’s post-modern jazz, a realm of much abstraction not usually given to autobiography or confession. But Douglas’s work is personal because its incredible range and diversity, taken as a whole, is a portrait of a brilliant and complete man.

The last year shows this with perfect clarity. You can forget the broad swath of his work from previous years: his music for silent movie soundtracks, his use of turntables and electronics, his immersion in Balkan music and his album of Joni Mitchell covers. Douglas’s released music in the last 12 months is enough to suggest that he is the most interesting and heartfelt jazz musician in recent times.

Greenleaf Records and “The Portable Series”

Since 2005, Douglas has been releasing his music—and increasingly that of others—on his own label, Greenleaf Music. Not that Douglas had previously seemed constrained in his artistic choices, but now he truly does what he wants when he wants. And so the full breadth of his artistic identity flies free.

At the end of 2011, Greenleaf made available three different records by Douglas reflecting three different angles on his remarkable trumpet voice. Called “The Portable Series”, these recordings were initially available by download only but were eventually pressed onto compact disc by demand. Each one, remarkable. Together, a revelation.

Read the entire column, including review of the latest by Linda Oh and Donny McCaslin at PopMatters at The Many Voices of Trumpeter and Composer Dave Douglas

Guillermo Klein: Carrera

Pianist and composer Guillermo Klein is a “jazz” musician because jazz is the only category that might comfortably hold his singular, fascinating music in its grip. Sure, Klein studied at Berklee in the 1990s, and there’s no doubt that his bands consist of trumpets and saxophones—played by jazz musicians. His large band had a residency at Small’s (a jazz club) in New York for a long time.

But his music ought to have it’s own name, somehow. It is that unique and intriguing.

Klein’s recent work, including the new Carrera, is with a mid-sized band (10 or 11 pieces) called “Los Gauchos”. This is a band that plays cool, intriguingly schemed-out music. The compositions and arrangements often have a puzzle-like quality, with many interlocking parts that wrap around and through each other. Klein gets the maximum number of colors from his group even as he specializes is a chill kind of impressionism.

Klein uses vocals (often in harmony) as well as horns, muted effects, interesting combinations of sound, and combining acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes electric piano. The result is music that is occasionally Ellingtonian, occasionally classical, and always beautiful. But it is a subtle beauty. There is little to Los Gauchos’ sound that has a sense of jazz swing or dynamic insistence. It is enigmatic music, perhaps. To its great credit.

“Globo” is a fine and astonishing example. This ballad sets up an austere vocal by alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon, usually shadowed by Klein’s baritone harmony an octave lower. The range of instrumental colors Klein accesses here has a gauzy beauty, from Ben Monder’s subtle guitar figures, to piercing muted brass, to buzzing low saxophones that barely register in the usual way. “AnteSano” embodies revelatory arrangement too, but in a different direction. Klein conjures fascinating sonorities by combining Rhodes and flute, handclaps and other percussion, Bill McHenry’s almost mathematical tenor sax solo with a set of written parts for other horns. This is music with the playfulness, say, of Chick Corea’s work, but it’s freighted with other unique flavors—kept close to the ground, for example, but a strong part for baritone sax. Wonderful.

Read the entire PopMatters review here: Guillermo Klein: Carrera

Shelby Lynne: Revelation Road (Deluxe Edition)

In 2001 when Shelby Lynne won the “Best New Artist” Grammy for the previous year’s I Am Shelby Lynne, she become a classic example of Grammy cluelessness—Lynne had been a professional singer and musician for over a decade at the time, having recorded a duet with no less a light that George Jones in 1988.

So that “new” thing was ridiculous, but the “best” part wasn’t. I Am Shelby Lynne was a ripe and wonderful record that reinvented Lynne as a country artist with unusual range and depth. With that recording, Lynne seemed not only “alternative” in that she sounded more like Lucinda Williams than like Faith Hill but also genuinely original—mixing rock and soul into her country sound with a bold clarity that contained bracing, confessional lyrics. The recordings that followed were not quite as stunning as I Am, . . . until the fall of 2011.

Revelation Road was released in October 2011, and it is Lynne’s finest recording. It’s also her most personal and most poetic. Lynne is the only songwriter here—but also the only musician. Released on her own label, this disc comes off as the most complete expression of Shelby Lynne there could be. Critics properly loved it.

A year later, Lynne is releasing a “Deluxe Edition” that includes five additional acoustic tracks of Revelation tunes or other exclusives, adding a sweet additional layer to this masterful record. If it seems too soon for Lynne to be re-selling what she released only a year ago, well . . ., maybe it’s never too early to celebrate something this good. Plus, the first disc comes in a collection with Lynne’s first live record, recorded earlier this year in Santa Monica, as well as two DVDs—another live show and a “making of” documentary about the 2011 record.

The climax of the disc is the devastating “Heaven’s Only Days Down the Road”, which seems to tell the story that can’t help but insist on itself in Lynne’s biography: the day that her father shot her mother and then himself, leaving Lynne and her younger sister (who happens to be the wonderful singer-songwriter Allison Moorer) as orphans. The brilliant stroke is that Lynne tells the story from the husband/father’s point of view, conjuring the pathos of a man who is doing a terrible thing and knows it beforehand, powerless to stop himself for tragic reasons. That Revelation Road provides one last tune, the sadly warm and generous “I Won’t Leave You” (“Oh, I can see the time / Has come for you to cry / Oh my, can’t say goodbye / Loving you’s the reason”) is just further proof of its emotional generosity.

The new music here will keep a listener happily busy for days or more. “Between the Rows” is the only new song among these bonus tracks. Like so many Lynne songs, it has uses strong and simple language to suggest a story of pain and downfall, laced with religious imagery and the landscape of her childhood home in the American south. The stabs of electric guitar and the gutty vibe of her voice more than make up for the simple acoustic backing. All of these songs combine the tough and the tender.

The live record from McCabe’s Guitar Shop is even more worth having. Lynne’s tells stories out front of several of these simple performances, putting the tunes even more in context and making them even more personal. Before singing “I’ll Hold Your Head”, she explains that she, her mom and her little sister (Moorer) learned to sing three-part harmony while driving to school each morning in rural southern Alabama. The performance of the tune is absolutely masterful—a vocal delivery that swoops and swings, rich in tone and conversational just when it has to be. When she sings “C’mon, Sissy, let’s close the door / Don’t want to hear the noise no more”, it’s plain that she is singing about the alcohol behind her parents’ tragic marriage, and the song’s title makes even more sense than when you first heard it.

Read the entire review on PopMatters at Shelby Lynne: Revelation Road (Deluxe Edition)