Call it semi, quasi, ersatz, but kib­itz­ing slowly on the heels of Jim Mac­nie, Patrick Jaren­wat­tananon and Hank Shteamer, I’m moti­vated to put up an anno­tated list of what are the best jazz releases I’ve heard so far this year. These are records that were new, or at least new to me, up through June, so there are things that promise some hard chal­lenges for these choices, like the upcom­ing Tyshawn Sorey release.

Like Hank, I’m excited over what has been a bounty of new jazz, new play­ing, new think­ing, not only through this year but over the past few years. Aes­thet­i­cally, the music is as strong and vital as its ever been, and the music is also explor­ing its own his­tory in ways that are excit­ing, because there’s much more to jazz than Bird, Elling­ton and ‘60s era Blue Note. Lists aren’t the best way to han­dle this, but they are not ter­ri­ble and the prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tion, at least for me, is that they help me craft some, hope­ful, coher­ence out of my usual con­fu­sion and fatigue. And so, in no par­tic­u­lar order (except what iTunes con­sid­ers alpha­bet­i­cal) are the 10 best 2011 jazz releases for the first half of 2011:

Alon Nechus­tan: Words Beyond 

It takes time for a devel­op­ing body of work to seep out to the pub­lic, even to the pre­sumed van­guard of which I’m sup­pos­edly a part, so Nechustan’s already sub­stan­tial body of work is new to me. I regret that because this is a great record­ing, and a total plea­sure from begin­ning to end.

What to call this? New clas­sic piano trio, per­haps. That group, as an inter­ac­tive rather than homo­phonic unit, has been a stand-alone strand of jazz his­tory since the Bill Evans Trio mes­mer­ized the scene. Nechus­tan is an ener­getic, ver­bose, witty, good-natured and force­ful pro­po­nent (as are bassist Fran­cois Mou­ton and dum­mer Dan Weiss) of it. The band’s play­ing is full of verve. They have a real power, but it doesn’t weigh them down, every­thing moves and grooves, the inter­play is out­go­ing and for­ward point­ing. Nechus­tan has a highly devel­oped two handed style and pro­vides a lot of his own coun­ter­point, free­ing up Mou­ton and Weiss to add accents, counter melodies and play­fully antag­o­nis­tic comments.

Nechus­tan as a pianist with a true, per­sonal voice. There are touches of Keith Jarrett’s country-funk by way of Brad Mehldau’s struc­tural sense, but he doesn’t sound like any­one other than him­self. All the mate­r­ial is orig­i­nal, and there are smart and respect­ful bits of Monk and Elling­ton in tunes like “Dif­fer­ent Kind of Morn­ing” and “The Trav­eler.” He writes tune­fully inside tracks that go well beyond stan­dard blues and song forms, and he often weaves impro­vi­sa­tion in between com­posed sec­tions, which give a sat­is­fy­ing feel­ing of fresh­ness and com­plex­ity. The record is full of the great legacy of jazz ideas, and is also com­pletely new, and seems to improve with each lis­ten. The epit­ome of piano trio jazz.

You can catch this group live, at the Cor­nelia Street Cafe, Sun­day August 7, 8:30pm, for their CD release performance.

 Ambrose Akin­musire: When The Heart Emerges Glistening

Jazz has pro­duced a great deal of beau­ti­ful music in its 100 years, but beauty is a qual­ity that jazz fre­quently dis­counts: there are few musi­cians — Johnny Hodges being a par­tic­u­lar excep­tion — who have pure beauty as their main value. Trum­peter Ambrose Akin­musire is clearly ded­i­cated to beauty, and his Blue Note debut CD is tremen­dously, pow­er­fully beautiful.

Hodges idea of beauty was a cer­tain dif­fi­dent ele­gance of line, tone and form, a kind of Apol­lon­ian ideal. Akin­musire is a bit more Dionysian. His quin­tet, with Wal­ter Smith III on tenor, Ger­ald Clay­ton, piano, Har­ris Ragha­van, bass and drum­mer Justin Brown, has a pow­er­ful, plan­gent post-Coltrane sound, they like to sink pedal tones and toss some hefty sonic weight around. The sonic qual­ity, which flows from the leader’s gor­geous tone, is beau­ti­ful, and the weight behind it just makes it phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally thrilling. The sound seems alive as it comes out of the speak­ers, form­ing into shapes in the air through which it moves.

The open­ing cut, “Con­fes­sions to my Unborn Daugh­ter,” is the attention-getter, almost ten min­utes of music that seems to be full of ever-unfolding, ever-burgeoning power. Akin­musire steps away for a great solo from Smith, who keeps his con­sid­er­able fire just far enough away so we are in no dan­ger, only delight. Every­thing is here from the start, and if there’s a bit of a drop-off in inten­sity in the rest of the disc, there’s none in qual­ity. Every­thing is touched with a mature, mas­cu­line feel­ing for love­li­ness, even the short inter­ludes var­i­ously titled “Ayneh.” There is one mis­step, a sin­cere but unsuc­cess­ful reac­tion to the almost casual, hor­ri­ble mur­der of Oscar Grant. The sen­ti­ment is wor­thy and under­stand­able, the exe­cu­tion of the idea is not there yet. But the future is beau­ti­ful for Akinmusire.

Ambrose Akin­musire and Quin­tet play “Con­fes­sions to my Unborn Daugh­ter” at Jazz Stan­dard

 Aram Shelton’s Arrive: There Was …

In the Many-Worlds The­ory of Jazz (which I’m mak­ing up on the spot), each new idea in the music, whether a grand con­cep­tion (like Third Stream), or a devel­op­ment in solo­ing styles (modal play­ing, for exam­ple), leads to a split­ting of a por­tion of the jazz uni­verse, cre­at­ing an entirely new ‘mul­ti­jaz­z­verse’ that from that moment on runs con­cur­rent and par­al­lel to all the cur­rent, extant jazz uni­verses. A key ele­ment that dif­fer­en­ti­ates jazz from quan­tum mechan­ics is that it’s pos­si­ble to not only travel across the mul­ti­jaz­z­verses but to exist in more than one simul­ta­ne­ously. See here for fur­ther explo­ration of a sim­i­lar concept.

One of these uni­verses was cre­ated in the mid 1960s, on Blue Note records, through such clas­sic albums as Out To Lunch, Des­ti­na­tion Out and Point of Depar­ture. The key fea­tures of this uni­verse were a hard-driving, hard-bop style of swing, an explo­ration of non-standard forms of writ­ing jazz tunes and har­mony, a dose of free impro­vi­sa­tion and an urgent, search­ing expres­sion, full of ques­tions with­out answers. A com­mon thread was the cool, clean vibes of Bobby Hutch­er­son. Once that uni­verse was cre­ated, it was left fairly mori­bund until the past decade, when a new gen­er­a­tion of musi­cians, like Steve Lehman, set out to chart its fea­tures and pos­si­bil­i­ties. To that crew, add Aram Shel­ton, and this great, intrigu­ing and unset­tling disc.

By unset­tling I mean this is jazz ded­i­cated to what might be, rather than what is. Melodic lines, impro­vi­sa­tional phrases, rhyth­mic pat­terns, these don’t nec­es­sar­ily resolve into neatly rearranged even lengths or con­so­nant har­monic cadences. There is a seam­less bal­ance between nota­tion and impro­vi­sa­tion, and equal care and thought put into each. This band has an excit­ing exac­ti­tude to its sound; the lap­idary cool­ness of excel­lent vibra­phon­ist Jason Adasiewicz, Jason Roebke’s rolling bass pat­terns and the remark­able pre­ci­sion and drive of drum­mer Tim Daisy, sound­ing like a cross between the young Tony Williams (heard on many of those Blue Notes) and Joey Baron. Shel­ton has a big, slightly keen­ing, slightly mourn­ful sound. There are no stand­out tracks because every­thing is so good. Each time I try and pick an exem­plary one, some other steals that atten­tion. This is a disc full of ideas about the past and future of jazz, anchored by pow­er­ful emo­tional expres­sion and wrapped in a bril­liant sur­face. When­ever I put it on, it seems like the great­est thing I’ve heard.

 BANN: As You Like

What makes this so good? It’s a superb group play­ing at a state of the art level. More exten­sive review in this pre­vi­ous post. Read the whole thing for a review of another disc on this Top 10 list, Chris Parrello’s self-titled debut with his band, Things I Won­der. It’s got a few flaws, but the more I lis­ten to it, the more the flaws sound inte­gral to the music’s ambi­tion, and to Parrello’s organic con­cep­tion. I never imag­ined a band that could sound like it was form­ing itself, on the fly, out of a stew of jazz, fusion, prog-rock and punk. The Bad Plus cracked open this door, Par­rello lopes through it, with­out any self-consciousness about mak­ing a state­ment. The Bad Plus comes to mind for the next release on this list:

 

 

 

 

 

Endan­gered Blood

I am famil­iar with the mem­ber of this band, reed play­ers Chris Speed and Oscar Nor­iega, and the all-star rhythm sec­tion of Trevor Dunn and Jim Black. This is a mus­cu­lar and decep­tively sub­tle ensem­ble. You’d expect some thrash and a heavy rock feel with Dunn and Black, and there is some of that, but it serves as the sea­son­ing in what is in many ways a straight-forward con­tem­po­rary jazz group.

But what a group! The lack of an instru­ment to play chords seems to direct them towards the hard-earned val­ues of con­stant inter­play, coun­ter­point and sup­port, in a style that comes, vaguely, out of Ornette Coleman’s con­cept. The sound is mod­ern, the vocab­u­lary is at times won­der­fully archaic, like a musi­cal cog­nate of the baroque, beau­ti­ful vul­gar­ity of the dia­logue from “Dead­wood.” There’s an excel­lent exam­i­na­tion of “Epistro­phy,” the rest is orig­i­nal pieces from Speed, like the ten­der and haunt­ing “K,” and the charm­ingly tipsy trad-style march, “Iris.”

It’s worth not­ing the sheer sound of this disc, which is upfront, nat­ural and pleas­ingly rough. Part of that is Speed’s raspy tenor, but the engi­neer­ing and pro­duc­tion are excel­lent and unique. On a good sys­tem, it sounds like the musi­cians are right there in the room. And the band, along with it’s obvi­ous might, is also relaxed, focused, witty and very humane.

Catch this band at Uni­ver­sity of the Streets, Wednes­day, August 10 at 10pm.

 Honey Ear Trio: Steam­punk Serenade

To my ears, Ethan Iverson’s group has not totally fol­lowed through on what they promised with their big label debut, These Are The Vis­tas (now almost ten years old). They proved that a group could play excep­tional mod­ern jazz with the stance and imme­di­ate excite­ment of a rock band, and have been doing that same thing, with vary­ing qual­ity, ever since. That idea is a begin­ning, not an end, and the Honey Ear Trio has picked it up and run with it.

The do play with a rock group’s imme­di­ate sonic and phys­i­cal appeal, and do much more. While steam­punk in music is pretty hard to iden­tify, much less describe, this band gets close to it. The music reaches back into pre-jazz New Orleans marches and extends into Minute Men ter­ri­tory, and fre­quently casts the shadow of a clas­sic power trio, with drum­mer Alli­son Miller the guid­ing force, bassist Rene Hart adding some scream­ing leads, and Erik Lawrence the front man on sax­o­phones. These cats can really play, the musi­cian­ship is excep­tional. Although they do only one stan­dard, a rich “Over The Rain­bow,” the music is full of his­tory; with touches of Monk, moments that remind me of Steve Lacy’s great trio disc The Win­dow, and always a per­sis­tent and most wel­come fla­vor of the mul­ti­jaz­z­verse bequeathed by the part­ner­ship of David Mur­ray and Butch Mor­ris: a pow­er­ful sound that sits at the apex of the pyra­mid of his­tory, and witty, pithy tune­ful­ness, full of sur­prise and satisfaction.

There’s a great store­house of musi­cal mate­r­ial that the group accesses and stitches together, so the disc is full of both vari­ety and focus. The thir­teen gen­er­ous tracks sound very dif­fer­ent from each other and all of a whole. That this is a coop­er­a­tive group with such a dis­tinc­tive sound is even more impres­sive. The musi­cians are all new to me, and I will express my shame in that igno­rance because their play­ing and think­ing are so damn good.

 Ben Kono: Cross­ing

This CD, as much as I’ve enjoyed it from the start, was not in this list, nor even near it at first. But per­sis­tent lis­ten­ing, dri­ven by a per­sis­tent desire to hear it more that the music clearly implanted in my head, has revealed its con­sid­er­able virtues and accom­plish­ments, and it deserves a place here.

Kono is one of the stal­wart ses­sion men on the New York scene, from Broad­way to the stel­lar big bands of Darcy James Argue and John Hol­len­beck. His ver­sa­til­ity as a player comes through on Cross­ing in a rich range of musi­cal think­ing; all the pieces are his own, and his writ­ing makes excel­lent use of word­less voice, french horn, and his own ter­rific flute and double-reed play­ing. His writ­ing makes the band, with Heather Laws the afore­men­tioned singer/horn player, Henry Hey on piano, gui­tarist Pete McCann, John Hébert on bass and drum­mer Hol­len­beck, sound enor­mous. The musi­cal ideas come out of the con­tem­po­rary legacy of sophis­ti­cated, inter­na­tion­ally tinged jazz com­po­si­tion and orches­tra­tion, make use of the best lessons from the likes of Pat Metheny as well as his own col­leagues. Kono places and empha­sis on melody, and is a real crafts­man, shift­ing his lovely lines through dif­fer­ent tex­tures and har­monies, com­bin­ing sec­tions that seem like bits of songs into larger forms and never los­ing track of where he has come from and where he is going.

There’s a great bal­ance of beauty, grace and sheer cook­ing, and the stun­ning “Rice” shows this all off, with a sharp does of funk as well. Kono him­self is a pow­er­ful player and an excel­lent impro­viser. My own slight caveat to the disc is entirely a bit of per­sonal taste, and it’s that his tenor play­ing just a lit­tle too close to his clear fore­bears, Michael Brecker and Chris Pot­ter. He has his own ideas, with­out a doubt, the tone is per­haps not 100% his own yet. This is not a prob­lem on the other horns, and he appears to my ears to be at the top of con­tem­po­rary jazz flutists. The sur­face qual­ity of this record­ing may seem, at first, a bit smooth and safe, but I’m con­fi­dent that the intel­li­gence, craft and plea­sure of it that rum­bles under the sur­face will insin­u­ate their way into your ears, as they’ve done with mine.

Matthew Shipp: Art of the Improviser 

A stu­pen­dous, mon­u­men­tal two disc set from an impor­tant musi­cian, thinker and icon­o­clast. I’m sav­ing a more thor­ough exam­i­na­tion for an upcom­ing look at impro­vi­sa­tion in gen­eral, but for now I think it’s valu­able to admit that Shipp is a musi­cian whom I’ve more admired than loved in the past. I respect his val­ues and goals, share a num­ber of them, but have found that the plea­sure in lis­ten­ing to his music is often marred by a ten­dency towards didac­ti­cism and man­ner­ism. There are scat­tered moments like that across this set, one solo and one trio record­ing, but they are few and ulti­mately over­whelmed by the incred­i­bly depth, rich­ness, power and mys­tery of the play­ing. If the title threat­ens pre­ten­sions, I would argue that it could be called The Art of Impro­vis­ing and would ful­fill that claim, and go far beyond it.

 MSG, Tasty!

Love the title, love the band, love the record­ing. Rudresh Mahan­thappa, whose Apex was one of the pin­na­cles of 2010, is one of the cooking-est, blowing-est (and most delight­ful), play­ers in jazz and blows the hell out of these eight sharp, hip vehi­cles, and Ronan Guil­foyle and Chan­der Sar­joe match him step (and stab, note, change of pace/meter/tempo) for step. Mahan­thappa can torch your ears like a flamethrower when he wishes, but this ses­sion is more on the light-hearted side of inten­sity. He slows down for moments that explore his plan­gent tone, but in the main this is the kind of quick-thinking and force­ful rhyth­mic artic­u­la­tion that is the wel­come main­stream in con­tem­po­rary jazz. Lis­ten­ing to Tasty! is like being dri­ven through an exhil­a­rat­ing and slightly unnerv­ing course in a Porsche, at high speed, by an expert dri­ver. Your safety does not leaven the thrills. Deli­cious and satisfying.