Jazz
Two very influential and brilliant Cuban musicians, Albita Rodríguez and Chucho Valdés, join together to make a fine album; Chilean guitarist/vocalist/composer Camila Meza serves up a potent mixture of jazz and lyrics concerned with social justice.
So what am I saying? That the system is imperfect, corrupted by bad voters like me (there must be a few others who didn’t listen to even close to everything on this list — show of hands?)
A particular guttural sequence of phrases from accordionist Ted Reichman suggested a musical cadence, and I felt myself respond with the jazz fan’s involuntary noise of appreciation: “Unh!”
The planned variety of sounds and rhythms is the adroit work of a composer dedicated to both freedom and his own version of continuity.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the release of John Coltrane’s magisterial album “A Love Supreme,” which has meant so much to so many.
Allen Lowe is a saxophonist, composer, and historian of early jazz and roots music who doesn’t think he’s getting a fair shake from jazz’s gatekeepers.
The whole band demonstrated an expressive variety of mark-making, as visual artists like to say: lines and squiggles and blotches, graceful or rude.
Happily, these clean, bright Craft reissues make some invaluable music glisten.
The magic in Eliane Elias’s performances is in how easily she slips from one musical dialect into another.
The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll — Sharing What We Know at Mid-Year
We are all part of a community with a deep commitment to this extraordinary but way-too-often unappreciated musical art, and the late critic Francis Davis believed we should work together and share what we know. His poll was one important way to do just that
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