Essays & Columns & Lists

Jan 5 2018

So… about 2017, Part III: Not Enough Days

 

Jaimie Branch walks her trumpet straight into 2017, moves to the center of the room and brings the house down.  Fly or Die is a remarkably strong vision confidently expressed.  It’s the kind of album you hope for every time you hit play on a new album, and feel blessed to actually encounter a handful of times each year.  It’s the way to wield music so that a challenging, unconventional project can come off as personable as a friendly handshake.  This is what Branch did.

Something else Branch did was pen a very openhearted and insightful look back on her success in 2017.  It was published on The Bandcamp Daily, and I highly recommend checking it out.

I think it’s best to spread the love around, so having two albums from the same label land in my top ten is a scenario I prefer to avoid.  But, damn, International Anthem crushed 2017.  I mean, as if two albums in my top ten weren’t enough, along with Fly or Die and the eponymous debut by Irreversible Entanglements they also put out a new thing from Makaya McCraven, a deluxe edition of Jeff Parker‘s 2016 release The New Breed, and the incomparable Not Living In Fear from the trio Hear In Now.

A member of the Hear In Now trio is cellist Tomeka Reid.  Let’s run this down.  She contributed to Branch’s Fly Or Die, Nicole Mitchell‘s Mandorla Awakening II, Nicole Mitchell’s other outstanding 2017 release Liberation Narratives (album write-up soon on this site), the duo collaboration Signaling with saxophonist Nick Mazzarella, and then any number of projects that could only be heard live.  That’s just in 2017.  Any conversation that revolves around naming an Artist of the Year has to include the name of Tomeka Reid to have any kind of legitimacy.  And if the conversation shifts to Label of the Year, the name International Anthem better come up.

Speaking of labels who had an excellent 2017, there’s a tiny label from Aarhus, Denmark that deserves a healthy dose of attention.  Jaeger Community Music quietly released an impressive array of recordings in 2017.  Hoax, the debut of I Just Came From the Moon was received warmly on this site, as was the latest from pianist Kasper Staub.  The cheerily named ensemble I Think You’re Awesome released another set of catchy, charismatic tunes with Books near the tail-end of 2016.  And then there’s Fabel by the Fabel trio.  That album earned the #22 slot on this site’s Best of 2017 list.

And let’s briefly revisit Fabel, because they did something extra special… as if one of the albums of the year wasn’t enough.  Their project was originally designed to be a multimedia project, and to be less considered a standard recording and instead viewed as an album-as-video.  It’s not quite a soundtrack, though it certainly behaves that way.  And the video that accompanies the music isn’t quite a movie, though it certainly behaves that way, too.  The film, viewed with no sound, implies a soundtrack of its own.  And the music, heard in the absence of the video, certainly generates its own vivid imagery.  But married together, the music and film resonate a power far greater than the sum of their individual impacts.  You should really go check out that video.

So, if I thought expanding the Best Of list to 50 would spare me a bit of my sanity, lemme tell ya, I was sadly mistaken.  Even with twenty extra slots, there were still excellent albums that didn’t make the list.  That’s probably always going to happen, but 2017 in particular presented challenges that previous years haven’t.  Maybe I say that every year, but 2017 sure as hell seemed deeper in quality than any other year of recent vintage.  I’ve stated before that it’s a slim difference separating the #5 album of the year and the one that lands in the #50 slot.  For 2017, expand that out to #70.  At least.

And damn there was an explosion of quality new releases that came out in the last few months of the year.  I’m still digging out of that hole, and it’ll be February before you stop reading about 2017 releases on this site.  Might even bleed into March.  And speaking of bleed… typically a Best Of list spans a year from November of the prior year to November of the current.  But with so many 2017 albums still in the queue one week into 2018, don’t be surprised if this site’s Best of 2018 list includes some September/October 2017 releases among its honorees.

Oh dear god, I’m already talking about the Best of 2018 list.  I’m getting a drink.

Cheers.

By • Essays & Columns & Lists, Other Writing • 0

Jan 4 2018

So… about 2017, Part II: We are everywhere

 

Next year, this post will be better.

For the 2017 year-in-review, you get only half an idea.

These things come to me in the moment, and I write stuff down and in the deluge of music, that stuff gets forgotten and buried under stacks of lists and one-sheets and drafts.  But I thought it would be fun to map out where the Best of 2017 music was coming from.  I didn’t remember this great idea until, well, like just yesterday.  I cobbled this map together real quick:

The purple dots represent the home turf of a musician whose album appeared in the Bird is the Worm Best of 2017.  If I’d been a bit more prepared, I’d have gotten those dots to scale in size based on total count of albums for that city.  For instance, the dot for New York City should be pretty damn large… something like 15 different albums could trace roots to Jazz Central.  And if I’m really badass, then I’ll get the map to represent every album I write about for this site (or other outlets)… which will really light that map up.

Another thing I’m gonna do next year is expand the definition of “home turf.”  As Vijay Iyer wisely pointed out during a twitter discussion, music that comes from New York City doesn’t necessarily reflect the breadth of the geographical influence upon the album.  For instance, I’ve got Diego Barber listed as repping NYC, but he hails from the Canary Islands.  Yazz Ahmed is tagged as London, but her Bahrain birthplace influences her music.  Fabian Almazan was born in Cuba and raised in Florida; does his time in New York dramatically affect his current sound?  Probably.  But does that mean it’s in the absence of places he’s previously set down roots?  No, probably not.  And what of the dramatic influence of Camila Meza on Almazan’s Alcanza?  Why shouldn’t we have a point on that map for her?  Guillermo Klein lives in upstate New York, and that relocation was critical in the Upstate Project album happening… but to ignore his Argentinean roots and not put a dot on South America is probably a misrepresentation of the diversity of the music hitting this site’s Top 50.  These are considerations that will go into next year’s map.  If I get started early on my data tables, and maintain them throughout the year, we could have a pretty cool map for 2018.

Let’s wrap up with some videos, because, hey, I don’t ever want to post something on this site where you aren’t able to hear some music.

Here’s a video from the Sandcatchers.  Their album What We Found Along the Way earned the #47 slot on the Best of 2017 list.

Next up is a video from the quartet MAP, whose Guerra e Paz received the #32 slot on the Best of 2017 list.

And let’s wrap up with a video from the Anne Quillier 6tet, whose album Dusty Shelters earned the #7 slot on the Best of 2017 list.

 

By • Essays & Columns & Lists, Other Writing, These are videos that I like • 1 • Tags:

Jan 3 2018

So… about 2017, Part I: Me and the NPR Music Jazz Critics poll

 

This was my fifth year to be invited to participate in the Jazz Critics Poll at NPR Music.  Begun originally by respected jazz critic Francis Davis back when the Village Voice was his home turf, this nifty compilation of Jazz’s best of 2017 is now housed over at the NPR site.  This was the poll’s 12th edition, the 5th since switching residence to NPR.  I’m no less flattered today than I was the first time around I was asked to submit a ballot.  I’m amazed it’s already been five years for me.  When I first began putting this column together, I was thinking maybe three years.  Time does slip on ahead whether or not you’re paying attention, don’t it?

The amalgamated results feature the top ten and list the top fifty, as well as some sub-categories.  It includes comments from Davis on each of the top ten results.  They also have sample tracks from each of the albums that fell in the top ten, and links to various other articles about the artists.  Also, Davis talks further on 2017 in jazz and his own ballot with a separate column on the NPR site.  I’ve embedded some music that appears on his list and the amalgamated list throughout this column.

Also, the individual ballots are compiled and maintained by Tom Hull over on his site, Hullworks.  In addition, there’s a list of all of the jazz critics, with links leading to their specific ballots.  My ballot (Dave Sumner) can be found HERE.

Every year that I compile and create my own site’s year-end Best Of list reinforces my genuine respect for the work Davis, Hull and the NPR staff put into making this thing happen.  It’s a mammoth undertaking.

Here was my ballot:

Album of the Year

  1. Yazz Ahmed – “La Saboteuse” – (Naim Records)
  2. Jaimie Branch – “Fly or Die” – (International Anthem)
  3. Brooklyn Raga Massive – “Coltrane Raga Tribute” – (Self-Produced)
  4. Nicole Mitchell – “Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds” – (FPE Records)
  5. Collectif Spatule – “Le vanneau huppé” – (Aloya Records)
  6. Marco Santilli’s CheRoba & il Fiato delle Alpi – “La Stüa” – (Unit Records)
  7. Anne Quillier 6tet – “Dusty Shelters” – (Label Pince-Oreilles)
  8. Red Planet with Bill Carrothers – “Red Planet with Bill Carrothers” – (Shifting Paradigm Records)
  9. Irreversible Entanglements – “Irreversible Entanglements” – (International Anthem)
  10. Hvalfugl – “By” – (Self-Produced)

Best Debut:  Jaimie Branch – “Fly or Die” – (International Anthem)

Best Latin Jazz:  Fabian Almazan & Rhizome – “Alcanza” – (Biophilia Records)

Best Vocals Jazz:  Irreversible Entanglements – “Irreversible Entanglements” – (International Anthem)

Reissue/Historical:  No submission

There’s no sense talking about any of my Album of the Year selections, since I covered that territory on my Best of 2017 list.  Well, except for one thing.  The number six slot on my NPR submission and this site’s Best of 2017 went to Marco Santilli and his CheRoba ensemble.  Except on the NPR submission, I chose his excellent La Stüa, whereas for Bird is the Worm, I went with L’occhio della betulla.  Both albums came out in 2017, and both are brilliant, though in different ways.  The thing is, I’m not going to call a “tie” and name both to a single slot, nor will I give two slots to the same musician in the top ten… at least, not unless the musician makes two wildly different albums with two wildly different ensembles… maybe then I would.  In any event, I decided to name one of the albums to the NPR ballot and the other for Bird is the Worm.  That way both albums gets some special end-of-year attention, and I get to retain a small remnant of my sanity.

As with recent tradition, I didn’t vote for anything in the Reissue/Historical category.  I just don’t have time to dig into that stuff.  I’m focused on music being made today, not on music from the last century.  Besides, there’s certainly no shortage of writers who are focused on Jazz’s past.  It’s not an easy decision to make, since I do see some interesting stuff passing through the “new releases” section.  One in particular that caught my attention was an archival find of the Thelonious Monk soundtrack to Les Liaisons Dangereuses.  These were tapes that had gone lost until quite recently.  Monk, as I’ve stated a number of times, is one of my top three musicians (any genre), and is arguably the musician who first got me hooked on jazz.  It was pretty damn exciting to get the opportunity to hear “new” Monk tunes.  However, I found it a bit underwhelming.  There’s nothing wrong with it, and the physical production of the CD… liner notes and photos and all that good stuff… is outstanding.  But many of these archival finds, in my opinion, don’t often live up to the excitement.  On the other hand, Resonance Records has been chugging along with new productions of old music, and there’s plenty of good stuff to be scooped up from their catalog.  Lately I’ve been enjoying their 2016 release of Larry Young’s Paris stint.

Of the ten albums I selected for album of the year, six of those recordings didn’t receive a vote other than my own.  Much to my surprise (and, honestly, disappointment), only one other person voted for my selection for album of the year:  Yazz Ahmed‘s La Saboteuse.  Interestingly enough, that person (Phil Freeman of Burning Ambulance) also chose it for the top slot.  I am genuinely surprised the album didn’t get more attention.  Two people other than myself put in a vote for the excellent Irreversible Entanglements.  Eighteen other critics joined me in recognition of Jaimie Branch‘s thrilling Fly or Die and a whopping 23 other critics also voted for Nicole Mitchell‘s visionary Mandorla Awakening II, which I believe is the first time one of my top ten selections also fell in the amalgamated list top ten.

Some thoughts about the amalgamated top ten recordings of 2017:

Here’s the Critics’ amalgamated list (with total points and total voters following each):

  1. Vijay Iyer Sextet, Far From Over (ECM) 347.5 (53)
  2. Steve Coleman’s Natal Eclipse, Morphogenesis (Pi) 208.5 (28)
  3. Tyshawn Sorey, Verisimilitude (Pi) 183 (31)
  4. Craig Taborn, Daylight Ghosts (ECM) 158.5 (25)
  5. Nicole Mitchell, Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds (FPE) 150 (24)
  6. Cécile McLorin Salvant, Dreams and Daggers (Mack Avenue) 135.5 (22)
  7. Roscoe Mitchell, Bells for the South Side (ECM) 133.5 (20)
  8. Matt Wilson, Matt Wilson’s Honey and Salt (Palmetto) 127 (21)
  9. Charles Lloyd New Quartet, Passin’ Thru (Blue Note) 113 (20)
  10. Ambrose Akinmusire, A Rift In Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note) 110 (23)

So, in addition to Nicole Mitchell’s album appearing on my own ballot (and, naturally, my site’s Best of 2017 list), the Tyshawn Sorey Verisimilitude received a slot on Bird is the Worm’s Best of 2017.  Steve Coleman’s Morphogenesis was one of my Best of Bandcamp Jazz selections, and one of the final cuts from the Best of 2017 list.  Other than Vijay Iyer‘s Far From Over, I didn’t write about any of the other albums for Bandcamp or Bird is the Worm (though there is a draft out there for Matt Wilson‘s interesting ode to Carl Sandburg).  Read into that whatever you want.  That said, ignoring 2017 recording output, if you were going to put together a list of the top musicians on the scene, all of those represented in the list above would be obvious inclusions.  There isn’t a musician on that list who hasn’t at some point lifted me up with some glorious music.

As per usual, both Blue Note and ECM Records are severely over-represented on these year-end polls.  Look, Blue Note & ECM… if you’re out there reading this… I love you.  I really do.  You and me, we go waaaaaay back to when jazz first blessed my life.  If either of you showed up on my doorstep and stabbed me in the heart, my dying words would be either Thank you for Dexter Gordon’s One Flight Up or Thank you for Codona III.  But, damn, critics need to get out of the house more and explore the wilderness of the new releases section.  This list makes it look like these two labels are the only ones making quality jazz these days, and I can prove beyond any doubt that is not the case.

But all that said… were you to go scoop up any one of the albums on that list, you can have the peace of mind that you’re buying some quality stuff.  There ain’t nothing cheap about the talent or the music on that list.  Any negativeness you may be picking up in my words is only reflective of my desire that these lists become more inclusive and better represent the breadth and depth of the modern jazz scene, in any way you want to measure it.

And that about wraps it up for today.  Remember, as I stressed previously, go to town on that NPR Music Jazz Critics list… and not just the top ten list, but all the albums that received votes.  Many of them have been written about on this site, but this is a great opportunity for you to revisit some albums that maybe you didn’t give enough attention before.  Or, inconceivably, albums I might not have sufficiently recognized for their genius and joy.

Thanks again for stopping by.  I hope 2018 is the best year ever.

Cheers.

By • Essays & Columns & Lists, Other Writing • 17 • Tags:

May 31 2017

I only kind of like Kenny Warren’s “Laila and Smitty” follow-up, and that makes me very happy

 

This is a nice album.  It’s enjoyable.  I like it.  And I’m thrilled to have such a tepid response to it.  And I am thankful as hell this album doesn’t hit me as hard as the first Laila and Smitty.  It gives me a sense of hope, and some closure, too.  I can’t help but think that Kenny Warren might feel similarly when listening to the follow-up to his excellent 2014 recording.

The trumpeter wrote and recorded that album in the wake of his divorce.  Every note of that album resonates with heartbreak and despair and a profound sense of loss.  A loss of love, of companionship and also of a willful innocence.  Because Laila and Smitty wasn’t just some really good break-up album.  Warren focused his own broken relationship through the lens of a different marriage… that of his Uncle Smitty and Aunt Laila, whose enduring bond was something Warren held in childlike fascination during his years in Colorado.  It would only be natural for Warren to aspire for the same qualities and similar outcomes of his own marriage.  And to have it all come crashing down, there had to be more than present-day heartbreak in play; a sudden and acute feeling of being much older had to have sunk in, and hard.

When I first stumbled upon Laila and Smitty, I was at the outset of my own separation and subsequent divorce.  The album was a fist through my chest.  The songs have warm tones and a sunny demeanor, but there’s an unmissable sadness to them as well, like the edge of shadow creeping further into the light.  The potent imagery Warren conjures up is the vehicle for expressions of loss… and not just of what he had, but also of what he sought to attain.  And for me, those motherfucking songs were forcing to the surface every bit of sadness and fear and desolation I was doing my damnedest to ignore or simply annihilate with whiskey.  That was bad enough.  But what made it worse was I couldn’t stop listening to the damn album, because as much pain as it yanked out of me, the music was so damn beautiful, too.  But then I read Warren’s seriously raw and unguarded liner notes, and that’s when I lost it just a little bit.  It’s also when I felt a kinship to this album.  All that vulnerability the music was bringing out of me, well, it didn’t seem so bad to realize that it came from a similar place in someone else, too.

I also spent some years out in Colorado.  It was a miraculous time for me.  I achieved a state of existence that I had previously only thought others capable of, and it happened in a place that was so unlike the grim surroundings of Chicago I’d previously called home.  But, eventually, I began to accumulate quite a lot of scar tissue in Colorado, and by the time I hit the road and literally walked out of town, I was a shell of the hopeful kid that drove straight at the Rocky Mountain horizon a decade earlier.  The world had come crashing down upon me, and I felt every pound of it.  The impact was measured as a loss of innocence, and of the belief my future was as wide and endless as that deep blue big sky of high country.  And to have recovered from those days and rebuilt a life for myself, which then included someone I loved very dearly, just to lose it all again… it crushed me.

But eventually I got better.  Life moves on, and there came a time when I decided to move on with it.  I go hiking again.  I’m working on three different writing projects (well, four, if you include this site).  I get out and live.  The big hurt has evolved from a huge sense of loss to a warm appreciation for what I was charmed to possess, even if for only a little while.

That change in outlook corresponds to how I view the second Laila and Smitty recording.  It just doesn’t resonate as strongly with me as the first, and I take some comfort in that.  It appears that Warren might feel the same.  When I asked him about the follow-up, he replied:

“A few of these newer songs still reference that same break up that fueled a lot of the first record’s songs, but they’re more hopeful and they benefit from a couple years of perspective and growth, both personally and musically. They are still, for better or worse, mostly autobio-mytho-graphical love songs.”

And that brings us to another notable experience from both recordings… confirmation.

All of us read into the music we’re hearing.  We react to it on a very personal level.  Some music is simply a pleasant conversation we’ve overhead via our stereo.  But there’s those albums that actually speak to who we are.  It can manifest in limitless ways.  Perhaps the music snaps perfectly into place with how we’re feeling at that specific moment in time… a sublime day where cloudy skies overhead and a cool breeze and city lights all converge for a cinematic moodiness that makes life feel as magical as the miracle it truly is.  The music is the unintentional vocalization of that sensation.  Sometimes the connection is more direct, where the vocalist’s intonation of lyrics, a trumpeter’s sigh of melody, the drummer’s intense chatter, a guitarist’s boundless ferocity… some or all qualities of that album might as well be an invocation of the heartbreak or happiness felt at some momentous point in our lives, becoming an indelible soundtrack to a memory that will be bound eternally within its notes.

But really, it’s just us.  At least, most of the time.

Once we hear it, it becomes our music, detached from its creator.  We feel what we feel, and we attach that significance to the source of the music.  That pained sense of loss we feel every time we hear a particular song, it’s so easy to project that upon the musician… that the song is a sign of her own heartbreak, and that’s why the association with our own is a bond so strongly felt.  A song’s emotional impact can strain the incredulous notion that it was created specifically for us and that intensely felt moment in our lives…  How can we not buy into the suggestion that the song came about from the same kind of moment for the musician?

Life’s most resonant and lasting images are experienced as a solitary event.  We may not be alone when they strike, and the event may very well be inextricably woven into the lives of others, but how those moments shape who we are is on such a personal level, connecting with all of the ineffable thoughts and cryptic emotions and singularly personal experiences leading up to it, well, it is a hidden effect, and there’s no way to truly make it publicly understood.  Try answering the question who are you with 100% accuracy.  You can’t do it.  I certainly can’t.  But I’ve heard music that does.  And when it does, and because it’s impossible to share the reason why, the natural inclination is to crash the solitary interface by connecting with the musician… and that requires believing the musician is in much the same place as we are, and experiences the music in precisely the same way.

Obviously, this is a ridiculous thing to do.

I can’t even get over how many times I’ve been bludgeoned with disappointment to learn that a song I believed to be about heartbreak and loss was actually inspired by a happy vacation or a good time with friends.  Or that a song that I believed so fervently to be a deeply contemplative reverie on how truly blessed we are to be alive first came to life when the musician was flipping through coupons in the frozen vegetables aisle at the grocery store when she was struck by the opening notes of a pretty melody.  Or, worst of all, when deeply affecting (and misheard) lyrics about never truly being alone are revealed to be a mundane exclamation by the vocalist of being loopy and stoned.  It can be a dangerous thing to try to connect with the musician.  Watching an interview about the album, reading the liner notes, checking out a transcription of the lyrics… those are risky steps to take with your most deeply felt music.  You’re just asking the musician to ruin their music for you.

But that didn’t happen for me here.  It turned out that my own experiences with the Laila and Smitty recordings lined up pretty closely with those of the musician.  Something solitary became not so much.  That’s no small thing.

Would it have changed things had Warren’s liner notes for the first recording or his emailed responses on the second been materially different than my own insights are personal reflections upon the music?  No, not really.  The heartbreak and loss I felt at the time I hooked up with the first Laila and Smitty album were real and not going anywhere.  And the sense of hope and closure I felt around the time when the follow-up album came out was gonna hang around no matter how the music hit me.

But it’s a small blessing to feel like you’re not alone.  It’s a massive revelation to realize it was also true.

Your album personnel:  Kenny Warren (trumpet, voice), Jeremiah Lockwood (guitars), Myk Freedman (lap steel), Adam Hopkins (bass), Carlo Costa (drums) and guest: Ilusha Tsinadze (banjo).

The album is Self-Produced.

Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon

And be sure to check out the first Laila and Smitty recording.  I wrote about that one as well.  Obviously, I liked it quite a bit.

 

By • Essays & Columns & Lists, Jazz Recommendations - 2015 Releases, Other Writing • 0

Apr 23 2017

Because the world is a very big place: Your expanded JJA Awards nominees

 

The Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) is a non-profit that provides a mix of jazz advocacy and journalism resources.  Everything about the organization comes off as well-meant.  Once a year, they, like most music organizations and sites (including this one), roll out a Best Of list.  Apparently the JJA membership vote on a number of categories, which leads to a nominating list, which then goes through another vote for the final selections.  The newest ballot, for the 2016 JJA Jazz Awards, was just released.  I very much like that the JJA has a Jazz Heroes section, which puts the spotlight on various people in communities tirelessly seeking to promote and advance jazz music.  However, the rest of their nominating ballot reveals a pretty big flaw.  A few years ago, after reviewing that year’s ballot, I stated it was unfortunate that only U.S.-based musicians were eligible for inclusion.  That’s when the JJA informed me that there was no such restriction, and the reason that almost every musician on the ballot lived on the east coast (with a few west coast musicians sprinkled in) was that’s how the votes shook out.

And that’s how it typically is.  It could lead you to believe that the only place the best jazz is happening is within or near the epicenter New York City and a couple hot spots along the California coastline.  This, obviously, is nowhere close to a representative picture of the state of jazz.  Outstanding jazz is being created everywhere, and it’s disappointing that a jazz advocacy group whose membership consists of jazz journalists isn’t able to reflect that fact.

So, in the spirit of jazz advocacy, I spent the last 48 hours putting together an impromptu “expanded ballot.”  I included only musicians (and labels) who aren’t based in the United States.  I used most of the JJA Awards categories.  I didn’t bother with categories like Album of the Year or Musician of the Year or Large Ensemble of the Year, because, quite honestly, those categories are adequately populated by the various inclusions on my Best of 2016 list.  In order to be included on my list below, each musician had to have a significant release in 2016 and/or contributed to someone else’s recording in a significant way… which I believe honors the true collaborative nature of jazz music.  Strangely, that doesn’t appear to be a requirement of the JJA Jazz Awards; there have been several musicians over the years who didn’t appear on a recording for a year they were nominated.

I also included the city each musician resides.  The locations are only as accurate as the online resources I utilized.  These lists are certainly not comprehensive.  I tried to leave it at five selections for each category, and I worked mostly from memory.  Most of the music I listen to each year (which numbers in the thousands of albums) stays with me pretty well… especially the best of it.  That said, there will be holes in this list, and I’m sure many of them will become apparent to me within 24 hours of posting this column.  By way of example, for the life of me I can’t figure out why I could only come up with three trombonist selections.  And I could filled pages for the “rare instruments” category, but kept it simple.  I did a quick review of my 2016 recommendations to fill in some holes on my list (relying 100% upon my memory is a dangerous approach for any venture), but not much more than that.  As I said before, this list isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but simply to put the spotlight on some musicians who aren’t receiving it elsewhere.

You can learn more about each of these musicians by searching their names on Bird is the Worm.  It will lead you to posts of album recommendations, which also have embedded audio, links to artist & label sites, retail options, and anything else that seemed like a good idea to include at the time.  I strongly encourage you to do it.  These are trails of breadcrumbs that can lead you to your next favorite album.  As an added incentive, I included some embedded audio.

Let’s begin…

 

Record Label of the year:

For-Tune (Warsaw), Edition Records (London), Clean Feed (Lisbon), Auand Records (Rome), Underpool (Barcelona).

Vocals:

Sissel Vera Pettersen (Trondheim), Alya Al-Sultani (London), Lucia Cadotsch (Berlin), Siyabonga Mthembu (Johannesburg).

Trumpet:

Laura Jurd (London), Natsuko Sugao (Barcelona), Rory Simmons (London), Susana Santos Silva (Porto), Sebastián Jordán (Santiago).

Trombone:

Tony Cattano (Livorno), Gianluca Petrella (Italy), Filippo Vignato (Mestre).

Alto Saxophone:

Alban Darche (Paris), Piero Bittolo Bon (Ferrara), Anna Högberg (Stockholm), Christoph Merki (Zurich), Marco Vecchio (Bologna).

Tenor Saxophone:

Malte Schiller (Berlin), Shabaka Hutchings (London), Christophe Panzani (Paris), Harald Lassen (Oslo), Elin Larsson (Stockholm).

Baritone Saxophone:

Joakim Berghäll (Helsinki), Anna Högberg (Stockholm), Mats Gustafsson (Vienna), Marco Guidolotti (Rome), Guillaume Christophel (Paris).

Soprano Saxophone:

Jasmine Lovell-Smith (Morelia), Joakim Berghäll (Helsinki), David El-Malek (Paris), Konrad Wiszniewski (Glasgow), Michał Król (Tarnów),

Flute:

Christophe Dal Sasso (Paris), Joanna Ważna-Pociask (Tarnów), Esinam Dogbatse (Brussels), Miho Wada (Auckland), Jane Bunnett (Toronto).

Clarinets:

Nils Berg (Stockholm), Rebecca Trescher (Nuremberg), Wacław Zimpel (Warsaw), Laurent Rochelle (Toulouse), Joachim Badenhorst (Antwerp).

Guitar:

Mikkel Ploug (Copenhagen), Jakob Bro (Copenhagen), Mathias de Wiele (Ghent), Pierre Perchaud (Ballancourt-sur-Essonne, France), Nicolás Vera (Santiago).

Piano:

Clemens Christian Poetzsch (Leipzig), Sean Foran (Melbourne), Giovanni Guidi (Foligno), Christian Wallumrød (Oslo), Ivo Neame (London), Sunna Gunnlaugs (Reykjavik).

Bass:

Jasper Hoiby (Copenhagen), Paraskevas Kitsos (Athens), Tomo Jacobson (Copenhagen), Christian Meaas Svendsen (Oslo), Miguel Ângelo (Porto), Henri Texier (Paris), Pippi Dimonte (Bologna).

Violin/Viola/Cello:

Shirley Smart (London), Peggy Lee (Vancouver), Andrew Downing (Toronto), Olivier Soubeyran (Paris), Lucy Railton (London), Dominique Pifarély (Paris).

Mallet:

Bex Burch (London), Roland Neffe (Berlin), Mario von Holten (Zurich), Stephan Caracci (Marseille), Victor Vieira-Branco (São Paulo), Ralph Wyld (London).

Drums:

Per Oddvar Johansen (Oslo), Mauricio Takara (São Paulo), Arnau Obiols (Catalonia), Einar Scheving (Reykjavík), Shun Ishiwaka (Tokyo).

Rare Instruments:

Daniel Herskedal, tuba (Oslo), Hermine Deurloo, chromatic harmonica (Amsterdam), Yan Lebreton, kamalengoni, (Paris), Stefanos Tsourelis, oud (London), Clemens Christian Poetzsch, fluid piano (Leipzig).

Have fun going through the list!

Cheers.

By • Essays & Columns & Lists, Other Writing • 4

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