What is your favorite contemporary jazz?

We have lots of discussion here about the great jazz musicians and labels of the 20th century, but what contemporary jazz artists do you particularly enjoy? Are there any great records from the last few years that you think more people should listen to or any upcoming releases you’re especially excited about?

 

Some brilliant stuff out there that keeps Jazz relevant to me. Fuse some funk & soul and you've got the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio.

(2018)

 

Joel Ross on vibes has made a positive impression

 

Tons!

Of course, many contemporary greats making vibrant new music started in the 20th century. I generally don't often bother to distinguish point of origin among today's greats.

Some fave albums from recent years:

Henri Texier - Chance
Hiromi - Spark
Stanton Moore - Conversations
Paolo Fresu - Alma
Theo Croker - Afro Physicist
Max Gerl - Tbilisi
Ingrid Laubrock - Contemporary Chaos Practices
Jimmy Greene - Beautiful Life
Verneri Pohjola - The Don't Dead Dream
Brian Blade - Landmarks

Marcus Miller - Afrodeezia
Jazzmeia Horn - Love and Liberation
Krokofant - Q
Geri Allen - Flying Toward the Sound
Vijay Iyer - Historicity
Nubya Garcia - Source
Rachel Therrien - Vena
Wadada Leo Smith - Great Lakes Suite
Shawn Purcell - Symmetricity
Henri Threadgill- In for a Penny, In for a Pound

 

Too many to delve in comprehensively, 2021 alone has been an amazing year for new jazz recordings -- I think having so few opportunities to gig (and make a living) has really make great jazz recordings, and a lot of really massive ones (William Parker's 10 CD Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World) but a couple of the last few years that I've adored:

A couple of my favorites from this year:

Jane Ira Bloom & Mark Helias - Some Kind of Tomorrow (my favorite album of 2021)
James Brandon Lewis - Jessup Wagon
Wadada Leo Smith - Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday
Amir ElSaffar - The Other Shore
Anna Webber - Idiom
Borderlands Trio - Wandersphere
Sound Prints - Other Worlds
Whit Dickey, Matthew Shipp, William Parker - Village Mothership
East Axis - Cool With That
Miguel Zenon & Luis Perdomo - El Arte del Bolero

A couple of may favorite from the last couple of years:

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio - D'Agala
Wadada Leo Smith - America's National Parks
Matthew Ship - Piano Equation
Vijay Iyer - Break Stuff
Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson - Crop Circles

I mean, how far back to you want to go? Every year there are dozens of great new jazz albums I love.

 

I LOVE the new album by Pino Palladino & Blake Mills on Impulse. Beyond category but it makes me feel like Roy Hargrove is still alive with his RH Factor. Rattles the doors and windows too.
Another bassist I dig is Derrick Hodge. Kind of a sound painter with his own style. His album "The Second" didn't leave my stack of honor next to the A/V system for at least a year. Fusion for the 21st century without the wanking.

 

I can already tell this is gonna' be an evil thread...

......gonna' add items to my already too long queue faster than I can listen to them

 

Just about every album by Eliane Elias.

 

The only jazz player I really follow that is current has been the guitarist Jeff Parker for the last couple of decades. He just put out a guitar only album that is very mellow last month called Forfolks, but his past few solo albums have all been quite good.

 

he's been around for awhile now but... mr. Brad Mehldau

 

Amaro Freitas

 

My favorite 2021 jazz albums are Somewhere Different by harpist Brandee Younger, and Kinfolk 2 by drummer Nate Smith.

 

One of my favorite and most listened to records this year is the debut from Nala Sinephro, Space 1.8. Brilliant record. Some talk about it in the best albums of 2021 thread.

 

Not exactly a new arrival on the scene, but I LOVE everything Peter Bernstein has ever done. One of my favorite jazz guitarists of all time. For my money he’s up there with greats like Wes Montgomery and Grant Green.

 

Hiromi Uehara

 

Of today's artists, these are the ones I enjoy the most:

Mary Halvorson
Ingrid Jensen
Tom Rainey
Brad Mehldau

And some Dutch artists I'm particularly proud of:
Kika Sprangers
Sebastiaan van Bavel
Tineke Postma
Sanne Rambags

 

Too many to list. My favorite current player / composer is Tyshawn Sorey. Everything that he does is phenominal, with my favorites being the massive Unfiltered and Pillars. Really, all of his work is outstanding and you can also hear him on one of this year's best records, Uneasy, led by Vijay Iyer (with the excellent Linda May Han Oh on bass).

 

I’m a big fan of the jazz artists based here in London such as Nubya Garcia, Sons of Kemet, Moses Boyd, Ezra Collective and The Comet is Coming. I’m also a fan of Kamasi Washington’s work.

 

Don't miss this record. Superb.

 

William Parker
Rodrigo Amado
Shabaka Huthchings
Tony Malaby

older musicians who are still making good albums
Joe McPhee
Henry Threadgill
Peter Brotzmann
Wadada Leo Smith
Roscoe Mitchell

 

Fabulous Austrian Trio
Esperanza Spalding
William Parker
John Scofield
Kurt Rosenwinkel
James Francies
Arild Andersen
Andrew Cyrille

 

Sorey is truly a genius. And on top of being a brilliant composer and musical thinker, when he gets behind a drum kit and plays jazz, he's one of the greatest drummer's I've ever heard.

I agree that everything he does is worth hearing, though I must say I haven't loved all of it equally, and a lot of it -- like Unfiltered and Pillars -- is LONG, which sometimes makes them hard for me to digest,

Lately I've been playing his 2016 album The Inner Spectrum of Variables, over and over. I'm convinced it's a masterpiece and one of the greatest things I've ever heard. It's not a jazz piece, more of a piece of conducted themed improvised chamber music, from an open score -- it can be performed as a through composed piece, an improvised piece, a piece using Butch Morris styled conducted improv -- for what is basically a piano and string quintet plus drums. It's long too, at 2 hours, but I find myself wanting to clear two hours so I can go on that journey again.



FWIW, I'm also a big Linda May Han Oh fan. Her playing in particular with Joey Baron in Sound Prints is just great -- bouncy and driving at the same time as being inventive. I haven't loved her music as a leader, but I'd go see a band just because she's the bass player in it. Sound Prints had a good album out this year, Other Worlds. I thought she had a particularly nice solo on this one:

 

I don't love everything Shabaka Hutchings does, but the 2020 Shabaka & the Ancestors album was terrific, and I'm a big fan of The Comet Is Coming too.

 

After these recommendations, I just cued up Uneasy.

 

I liked but didn't love Uneasy. I kind of blow hot and cold on Vijay Iyer's work generally, and I really don't like the ECM sound as its gotten duller and duller and more and more laden with reverb (the late '70s and early '80s releases were much better) -- I think it really robs jazz music of its energy and I find it work to have to listen around it. I prefer Iyer's recordings on ACT, especially Historicity. I really did like Iyer's trio album on ECM from a few years ago, Break Stuff. I'll have to spend more time with Uneasy.