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Chris May's Best Jazz Albums Of 2024
by Chris May
In case you missed the sad news, our dear friend and compatriot, Chris May, passed away in November (read our tribute). Below are the albums he considered extraordinary in 2024--a final testament to his discerning taste and love of sound. -mR Rob LuftDahab Days Edition Records
Josephine Davies: Satori: Weatherwards
by Chris May
From an international perspective, the best kept secret in British jazz could be tenor and soprano saxophonist Josephine Davies. She first recorded in 2000 as a member of Crissy Lee's Jazz Orchestra, a fifteen piece all-woman band who made one album, the self-produced ...With Body And Soul. (Actually, there was one male in the lineup, trumpeter ...
Tadd Dameron: Fontainebleau & Magic Touch Revisited
by Chris May
There is much that is tragic about Tadd Dameron's story. The composer, arranger and pianist fell prey to the heroin epidemic that gripped New York's jazz world in the 1940s and 1950s. He did jail time for his addiction in 1959-60. He died at the woefully young age of 48 years in 1965. But there is ...
Roy Hargrove's Crisol: Grande-Terre
by Chris May
Increasingly and with growing momentum, right up until he died at the young age of 55 in 2018, Roy Hargrove was a standard bearer for a new kind of African American jazz. The recipe embraced a variety of styles--jazz, Afro-Cuban music, funk, hip hop and soul--and it influenced a generation of musicians in jazz and beyond. ...
Top Ten Sci-Fi Jazz Albums
by Chris May
On The Launch Pad Robert Frosch, head honcho at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1977 to 1981, wrote that at cocktail parties he was sometimes asked whether NASA had some gizmo or other that had recently been brought to fictional life in a sci-fi book or movie. If Frosch's answer was “No," the next ...
Sidsel Endresen, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré: Punkt Live Remixes Vol.2
by Chris May
The person who ought to be reviewing this album is, of course, the longtime AAJ writer and editor John Kelman/Dave Binder. Dave attended Punkt festivals on behalf of AAJ from the mid 2000s to the late 2010s, when ill-health stopped him making the long-haul flights to Norway. He was fascinated by Punkt's live- remixes, reporting on ...
Flock: Flock II
by Chris May
Flock is composed of five of the most venturesome musicians in British jazz. Reeds and woodwind player Tamar Osborn, drummers and percussionists Bex Burch and Sarathy Korwar, and keyboard players Danalogue and Al MacSween. Separately and collaboratively, they have since the late 2010s given us landmark genre-crossing albums in bands including Emanative, The Comet Is Coming, ...
Neil Cowley Trio: Entity
by Chris May
British pianist Neil Cowley put his trio on hold in 2017 to go solo. Entity marks the return of the group, which is completed by bassist Rex Horan and drummer Evan Jenkins. This is their eighth album since 2006, and the fourth with Horan in the lineup (Jenkins has been present from the start). The press ...
Dann Zinn: Two Roads
by Chris May
Bliss. Here is a tenor saxophonist to file next to the great New York-based Israeli tenor saxophonist Oded Tzur. The two players are far from interchangeable: each has their distinct sound and each has their distinct style. But both bring intimacy and solace to the soul, and both beam out a vibe of positivity. Tzur and ...
Aaron Parks: Little Big III
by Chris May
After debuting with a clutch of albums on Keynote around the start of the millennium, and then spending five years with Terence Blanchard, Aaron Parks emerged as a fully-fledged bandleader with his album Invisible Cinema on Blue Note in 2008. On it, Parks fronted a quartet completed by guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Matt Penman and drummer ...
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