Fred Kaplan’s Best Jazz Albums of 2011
I veer away from ruminating on war and peace in my Slate column today, to run down my list of Best 10 Jazz Albums for 2011. My piece over there includes hyperlinks to 30-second sound clips (the maximum that copyright law allows), but here's the list (the more devoted of you readers will notice that I've written in this space about all of them over the past year).
George Russell, R.I.P.
George Russell died today, at the age of 86, after a long bout with Alzheimer’s, and if you’ve never heard of him, all the deeper pity.
Geri Allen, R.I.P.
Geri Allen, one of the great jazz pianists, died on Tuesday, of cancer, at the terribly young age of 60. She made wondrous, rousing, deeply felt music from all eras and styles, with collaborators of all stripes or solo. She could be raucous or elegant, bluesy or lyrical, sometimes all four at once.
Geri Allen's Flying Toward the Sound
Geri Allen’s new album, Flying Toward the Sound (Motema Music), is a stunner. She calls it “a solo piano excursion inspired by Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock.” In jazz pianists’ lingo, this is like Babe Ruth pointing to a spot in right-center field. And she slugs the ball out of the park.
Gil Evans' Out of the Cool in 45rpm
Acoustic Sounds, Chad Kassem’s Oz of analog wonders, has expanded its line of 45rpm jazz reissues to the Impulse! catalogue. Like the Blue Notes, which Kassem and Mike Hobson’s Classic Records have already covered (at 45, 33-1/3, 180g, 200g, black vinyl, clear vinyl, just about any format you might imagine), the great Impulse! albums were engineered by Rudy Van Gelder and featured the masters of their day—Coltrane, Mingus, Rollins, and, one of the most innovative big-band arrangers in modern jazz, Gil Evans.
Great Piano Trios: Fred Hersch and Brad Mehldau
Two of the great jazz pianists on the scene have just released two of their greatest trio albums: Fred Hersch, Sunday Night at the Vanguard (Palmetto); and Brad Mehldau, Blues and Ballads (Nonesuch).
Haden Plus
I’ve been cramming to make a deadline all week, much of it spent out of town reporting, but here’s a quick preview of bloggings to come:
Hank Jones, R.I.P.
The pianist Hank Jones died on Sunday at age 91, ending one of the great jazz dynasties (his brothers were the drummer Elvin and the trumpeter-composer Thad) and taking out one more survivor of the generation that founded post-war jazz.
Happy Kind of Blue Day!
On August 17, 1959—50 years ago exactly—Columbia Records released Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, which became not only the best-selling jazz album of all time but also one of the best jazz albums, period, the spearhead of the “modal” revolution.
Heads Up on Bobby Bradford
Just back from seeing the Bobby Bradford Quintet, featuring David Murray, one highlight among many of the Dave Douglas-curated New Trumpet Music Festival at the Jazz Standard in New York City. One of the most invigorating sets of jazz I've seen in a long time, the sort of exuberant, "free" but highly disciplined music that the city heard plenty of in the 1980s through mid-'90s but rarely anymore. More about that later. Meanwhile, the quintet expands to an octet tomorrow (Sunday, Oct 4). I can't make it, but if you can, get tickets now!