Once again Rhap­sody is going to be host­ing the annual poll of jazz crit­ics that Fran­cis Davis has been orga­niz­ing for the pre­vi­ous six years, and I have voted in it for the third year run­ning (results will be pub­lished January).

Here’s the bal­lot I gave him, plus more. The nature of the list is that it is a snap­shot in time, as of late last week, and if I put it together again today it would likely be dif­fer­ent. The rel­a­tive rank­ings change on a daily basis, and some discs that I list below as ‘Hon­or­able Men­tions’ might find their way into the top ten, and vice-versa. What this means is that these are all fine record­ings, span­ning a broad range of think­ing and styles. Discs in the ‘Hon­or­able Men­tion’ can be as strong as the top ten, but depend­ing on the day I’m lis­ten­ing they might have seem to have a lit­tle less of that cer­tain je ne sais quoi, that bit of idio­syn­cratic music-making that pushes past forms and struc­tures. One thing is pretty rock-solid though, and that’s the top two records which can go back and forth for me minute to minute but are the two finest jazz releases of 2012.

2012 best new releases:

1. Sam Rivers Trio, Reunion: Live in New York

2. Elliott Sharp Trio, Aggre­gat

Two records of trio impro­vi­sa­tions, both of the very high­est order. The music on each is free play­ing but within an exten­sive and clear jazz vocab­u­lary and syn­tax: each trio works with rhythm, har­mony, hor­i­zon­tal lines that are fair to call melody. Great group play­ing that main­tains space for both clar­ity and order and the type of con­stant inven­tion that pulls your atten­tion along. The most excit­ing and sat­is­fy­ing jazz albums of the year. Rivers is more beau­ti­ful, Sharp is more exu­ber­ant, so go with your mood.

3. Wadada Leo Smith, Ten Free­dom Summers

Smith’s explo­sively cre­ative late period con­tin­ues with a record that marks a high point in the com­po­si­tion of jazz. Smith res­olutely avoids try­ing to make jazzy com­po­si­tions or com­posed jazz and jux­ta­poses ways to guide and sup­port impro­vi­sa­tion with extended musi­cal state­ments for strings that are expres­sive non-jazz com­po­si­tions. His lan­guage and skill as a com­poser of con­tem­po­rary cham­ber music are on par with Threadgill’s, mean­ing he’s mak­ing some of the most impor­tant music inside or out­side the acad­e­mies and con­cert halls. While the album is ‘about’ the civil rights move­ment, very lit­tle of the music falls into the trap of try­ing to illus­trate his­tory and ideas. It’s just Smith telling us what he thinks and feels. It’s an enor­mous amount of music, and so not entirely con­sis­tent, the only qual­ity that keeps it from the top rank.

4. Liv­ing by Lanterns, New Myth/Old Science

A good year for Mike Reed, who has another ter­rific post-Mingus release below, but this record, explor­ing rock and elec­tron­ics, is even more exciting.

5. Henry Thread­g­ill Zooid, Tomor­row Sunny/The Rev­elry Spp

Thread­g­ill has added a cello to Zooid, and that extra voice adds trans­parency and depth to his com­po­si­tional con­cept, itself a bal­ance between abstract beauty and wicked funk.

6. Steve Lehman Trio, Dialect Flu­o­res­cent

An intense blow­ing date from arguably the most impor­tant alto player of this generation.

7. Ahmad Jamal, Blue Moon

The return of the Magus. Jamal picks up ele­ments of con­tem­po­rary music, shreds them through his suc­cinct blues feel­ing, and makes the best con­tem­po­rary stan­dards and piano trio album that has come out in many years.

8. Jacob Garchik, The Heav­ens

Garchik mans all the brass rein­vents the idea of litur­gi­cal jazz and roots music.

9. Jerome Sab­bagh, Plugged In

Jazz-Rock as it should be; sophis­ti­cated, funky, soul­ful, shed­ding the for­mal and rhyth­mi­cal lim­its of rock and the standards/song-form con­ven­tional wis­dom of jazz.

10. Vir­ginia May­hew Quar­tet, Mary Lou Williams: The Next 100 Years

A great disc of small-group jazz play­ing, with mate­r­ial from one of the most impor­tant and under-appreciated inno­va­tors in the music’s history.

2012 Best Reissues

1. Charles Min­gus, The Jazz Work­shop Con­certs 1964

One of the two great groups of the 1960s, along with Miles Davis’ sec­ond Quin­tet, mean­ing one of the great groups of all time. This was a his­toric tour, and there are many con­cert record­ings avail­able, great to extra­or­di­nary. Min­gus is still the finest com­poser of jazz music, meant to be played as jazz, and the band — Dan­nie Rich­mond, Jacki Byard, John­nie Coles, Clif­ford Jor­dan and Eric Dol­phy — under­stood his struc­tural ideas implic­itly, while also blow­ing their asses off. Essential.

2. Steve Lacy, Com­plete Remas­tered Record­ings on Black Saint/Soul Note; Solos, Duos and Trios

This col­lects his solo Monk records, duos with Mal Wal­dron, includ­ing the exquis­ite Sem­pre Amore, and an excel­lent trio date, The Win­dow. Essen­tial.

3. Weather Report, The Com­plete Colum­bia Albums 1971–1975

There was an inter­view with Joe Zaw­inul and Wayne Shorter in Musi­cian mag­a­zine in the 1980s where, and I’m para­phras­ing, Zaw­inul said “Weather Report is the great­est fuck­ing band in the world, man.” He was right, of course. In this box you can hear them over­come their fairly pre­ten­tious begin­nings via the fero­cious Live in Tokyo, which has never been in print, I believe, in the US. From there to Sweet­nighter and eter­nity. Essential.

2012 Best Vocal album

Chris­tine Cor­rea & Ran Blake, Down Here Below

There are singers who sing jazz songs, stan­dards, pop tunes with great artistry, then there are great artists who make music with the voices. That’s Chris­tine Correa.

2012 Best debut

Old Time Mus­ketry, Dif­fer­ent Times

A debut in the truest sense, a first state­ment full of promise. Old Time Mus­ketry is mak­ing con­tem­po­rary music with one foot in early jazz. This is a good record, enjoy­able and intrigu­ing, and if it feels at times a lit­tle stiff and a lit­tle unsure of itself, it’s qual­ity tells me the next record is some­thing to look for­ward to.

 

2012 Best latin Jazz

David Virelles, Con­tin­uum

The stale, living-dead jazz that is too preva­lent in the music is the worst in latin jazz, and end­lessly repeated set of licks and ges­tures, style with no sub­stance. Which is shame, because there are so many musi­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties in the genre. David Virelles has done some­thing enig­matic and evoca­tive, tak­ing the firm roots of the music and twist­ing them into an entirely new kind of tree.

Hon­orary Mention

• Bal­lis­ter, Mech­a­nisms
• Hairy­bones, Snake Lust
• Ergo, If Not Inertia
• Fred Her­sch Trio, Alive at the Vil­lage Vanguard
• Hafez Modirzadeh, Post-Chromodal Out!
• Chris­t­ian Lillinger’s Grund, Sec­ond Reason
• Mike Reed’s Peo­ple Places and Things, Clean on the Corner
• Vijay Iyer, Accelerando
• Konitz/Frisell/Peacock/Baron, Enfants Ter­ri­ble
• Side A, A New Margin
• Sean Way­land, Click Track Jazz: Slave to the Machine
• Jim Black Trio, Somatic