Talkin’ All That Pazz

Gone quiet for a bit, and it seems each time I planned another newsletter, there was one more big, heavy thing rolling through. And not to say any of this (gestures everywhere) is nothing, it’s not anywhere near, but just to say my family and I are doing okay here where we are, and so here we go.

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End of Year and Polls and Picks

Every year, I’m delighted to be asked to include my ranked list to Free Jazz Blog and the Francis Davis Jazz Poll. I’ve been in the first for a number of years now and in the second for three or four, and with both I really enjoy digging into the albums I listened to over the past year and thinking about what I might consider the best of that bunch, as well as why I might rank one album above another.

First, let me share my list. This was the first year that I submitted an identical list to both, due to the fact that Free Jazz Blog holds to a rule that the album on the list needs to have been reviewed during the year; naturally, this means several of us slamming together reviews late in December trying to cram in as many eligible albums so we can finalize our lists. I’m going to paste in my poll from the Francis Davis Jazz Poll, which includes a couple more categories but doesn’t include my brief commentary, which can be seen on the Free Jazz Blog poll results linked above.

NEW ALBUMS

1. Matthew Shipp Trio, New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz (ESP-Disk)

2. Darius Jones, Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) (AUM Fidelity)

3. Allen Lowe & the Constant Sorrow Orchestra, Louis Armstrong’s America (ESP-Disk)

4. Jason Stein, Marilyn Crispell, Damon Smith, Adam Shead, Spi-raling Horn (Balance Point Acoustics)

5. أحمد [Ahmed], Giant Beauty (Fönstret)

6. Space, Embrace the Space (Relative Pitch)

7. Matt Mitchell, Illimitable (Obliquity)

8. Anthony Braxton, 10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022 (Braxton House)

9. John Zorn, New Masada Quartet, Volume 3: Live at Roulette (Tzadik)

10. Weird of Mouth [Mette Rasmussen, Craig Taborn, Ches Smith], Weird of Mouth (Otherly Love)

RARA AVIS (REISSUES/ARCHIVAL)

1. Andrew Hill Sextet Plus 10, A Beautiful Day Revisited (2002, Palmetto)

2. Tony Oxley, Angular Apron (1992, Corbett vs. Dempsey)

3. Phil Haynes’ 4 Horns and What?, The Complete American Recordings (1989-95, Corner Store Jazz)

4. Ron Miles, Old Main Chapel (2011, Blue Note)

5. Sun Ra, At the Showcase: Live in Chicago 1976-1977 (Jazz Detective)

VOCAL

1. Fay Victor, Herbie Nichols SUNG: Life Is Funny That Way (TAO Forms)

2. Barbara Hannigan, Hannigan Sings Zorn, Volume One (Tzadik)

3. Alexander Hawkins & Sofia Jernberg, Musho (Intakt)

DEBUT

1. Karen Borca & Paul Murphy, Entwined (Relative Pitch)

2. Arun Ramamurthy Trio, New Moon (Greenleaf Music)

A couple of notes about the proceedings:

1. I really like that FJB posts lists at the end of December, and ArtsFuse posts the Francis Davis poll in early January. To me, a simple-minded and calendar-focused sort of person, there is a natural logic to this that works better than lists showing towards the end of November (although I understand the sales-friendly publishing strategy, there are albums coming in December sometimes without advance notice which often find their way onto these lists).

2. Many, many, many people like to post their unranked list, with many reasons for saying “there’s no such thing as best” or something along those lines. And sure, might I hear another album that I think is better than the one I ranked at the top? Maybe. Did I hear every album that was released last year? Nope, not even close. Do I care about either possibility? Again, nope. For me, a ranked list is challenging, it forces me to really think about my personal stance, my perspective on what’s valued in jazz music (and all its adjacent forms). I think we’re being too adorably precious when we try and deny subjective opinions.

3. The point of the exercise of compiling all these ranked lists and generating a top-line summary is to see what comes to the surface. Again, both FJB and the Francis Davis Jazz Poll do this; we all submit lists and depending on the number of times mentioned, an album might rise or not, on the final list. It has a democratic veneer, and, what’s more, functionally, the process works to demonstrate the group’s perspective. Here’s something… 

The top album in the Francis Davis Jazz Poll is Patricia Brennan’s Breaking Stretch.

Now, I thought this was a really excellent album. Without a doubt, it’s already Brennan’s best album—it builds on her quartet album More Touch to show continuity of ideas and also breaks new ground. I was reminded of Mary Halvorson’s epic 2010s run with her trio, quintet, septet, and octet. Nevertheless, Brennan’s album didn’t make my list. And yet, the album being at the top of the general list didn’t bother me at all, I felt like I was represented by that collective pick.

I felt exactly the same when the Free Jazz Blog album of the year was posted, the debut album by ØKSE [Mette Rasmussen, Val Jeanty, Petter Eldh, Setter Harris].

This was another case where the album wasn’t on my personal list, but I felt like my opinion was represented by the collective number one. For what it’s worth, I generally try as hard as possible to not repeat players or labels—within ten albums, that shouldn’t be too hard, and since Rasmussen is on both, I opted for Weird of Mouth over ØKSE.

On the flip side, there were two piano trio albums that ranked higher than my top pick, Matthew Shipp Trio’s New Concepts In Piano Trio Jazz. Those were Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, and Tyshawn Sorey’s Compassion and Kris Davis Trio’s Run the Gauntlet. In both cases, I wasn’t what I sometimes call “convinced” by the albums, which is to say, they both sounded expertly performed but didn’t win me over or compel me or connect with me in a meaningful way. I found Iyer’s to be a lesser effort than Uneasy, it seemed more like an album biding its time rather than moving forward. And Davis’s was an excellent return to the trio format, but after the thrilling live Diatom Ribbons album, this one seemed merely fine.

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Several of us, including the poll’s namesake Francis Davis and its chief coordinator Tom Hill, ranked Allen Lowe & the Constant Sorrow Orchestra’s Louis Armstrong’s America very high—Davis and Hull both ranked it at #1, myself and Hrayr Attarian ranked it at #3, and on from there. Lowe’s been through the wringer with some major health issues, and he still composes at an astonishing rate.

I wrote a brief review of Lowe’s album, I could literally go on about it for hours. My schedule’s a little funky these days, between some large work projects and gearing up with 2025 releases, but I do hope to continue evangelizing about Lowe’s work well into the future. If you’re even the slightest bit curious and want to chat, feel free to reach out; I’m easy to find here and elsewhere.

The Rara Avis release that falls, for me, in the same category is Phil Haynes’s much-needed repackaged and expanded collection of albums by his 4 Horns & What? quintet.

Paul Smoker and Andy Laster appear on all three albums (two previously released studio albums and a brand-new live album, recorded in 1995), with a rotating cast rounding out the group. Of particular note is Herb Robertson, who appears in studio and live. Haynes and Robertson were always excellent together, and pulling this gig off the shelf gives us that little bit more we can hope for; with luck, releases featuring Robertson will continue in the coming years. Again, this wasn’t my #1 pick, that went to the revelatory remaster of Andrew Hill’s epic A Beautiful Day, Revisited. With full-length takes, polished sound, and a reconstructed tracklist, this release did exactly what archival releases should do, reframing a previously released album by giving us a new way of hearing and understanding the music. Separately, I adore Hill’s music, so any chance to hear more of it is always welcome. The complete A Beautiful Day with rehearsal takes, anyone? I can almost guarantee it’d be my #1, no contest.